We stayed in Paris for a few days for my sister's wedding. We know some Canadian french, and the Parisians were ok with that. Never got any bad reactions. I was a little worried about how it would go over with the reputation they have.

yes, this is also what I read, that French people are mostly happy to hear a foreigner speak their language, certainly happier than if they have to speak in a foreign language...

I have been to France a few times and speak French very imperfectly, yet no one has ever told me not to speak French.

When I visited France, I always attempted to speak French, and would explain in French that I was very bad at it, and I only had good interactions where people seemed to appreciate the attempt and would switch to English for me or if they didn't speak English we would just use google translate. Even in Paris.

As a Dutch person visiting France often: this is the case, and French people nowadays do their best to speak English, not always with great results, but it's way better than twenty years ago.

But there must be an attempt at French, at least a bonjour. If you assume English will be spoken by default you'll have a hard time (and I fully agree)

We've just been on the french north coast last week (from Austria) and I was also positively surprised. Everybody was really nice and spoke English very well. I'm still traumatized by 4 years of french in school because whenever I said something I was scolded that the pronunciation is wrong. Unfortunately that made me hate the french language, but french people made me more confident now and maybe I can set my peace with french now.

When I was visiting Alsace with my family, we witnessed a stereotypical interaction between the loud English speaking Americans and the French hotel staff, and neither could communicate well, and both were frustrated. My family was next in line, and the hotel staff looked at us like, "oh God, what's next," but when we started talking to them in French they melted. They were so happy that we could communicate easily, and were so much more relaxed.

I never had seen a French person frowning at the worst possible attempt at French.

Your French could sound like a seal having a stroke while tripping on acid, like a 1920 Ford T coughing on sugar reach diesel, like a dyslexic Albanian speaking Icelandic - and still the result will be at least an attempt at understanding and communication.

Compare that to Germany, where one mispronounced syllable in a conversation with a native aboriginal make the same effect as if you were telling them a double 4-disk Enigma encrypted message.

French here too. Its accurate and the map is wrong. We love when people speak French with weird accents, its fun.

Or the Walloons. At least not when I grew up there trying to learn the languages.

I had a lovely experience with a Parisian lady where I, for the life of me, couldn't remember "magasin" when I was trying to buy my child a toy as a gift and bless her heart she stayed with me until she eventually got it and we both squealed together.