When I went to France I remembered enough high school French to ask for directions, but didn't remember enough to understand the reply. Luckily everyone spoke English anyway.

People that have lived in France for years and speak perfect French told me that when they try to order something in French the waiters just look at at them with contempt and respond in English. It's not you, it's them.

French people are so bad at speaking english that those who can manage want to show it off at every opportunity.
But in Montréal, it's more a matter of an inferiority complex from french speakers. And the habit to be forced to speak english with those who don't want to learn french.

I tried to buy cigarettes. "Winston, s'il vous plait," while pointing at them. Lady started screaming for her colleague, "anglais!" Then I had to ask for them in English.

No need to bother with French.

I had a similar problem when I lived in Japan, but it manifested in sort of the opposite manner. My Japanese was shit, but my work (as an English teacher) required that I answer the phone using a long Japanese greeting.

Eventually, I could do that greeting in my sleep with very little accent. And I have a name that could be mistaken for a Japanese name.

Inevitably, I'd finish the greeting and they'd respond with a torrent of full speed Japanese that I couldn't understand at all.

I considered doing the greeting poorly, but instead, I just said "Hello" in English after finishing the greeting and people usually got the idea.

Dur mais réel.

That’s how it was in NL too.

We’d say hello / good morning in Dutch and they’d clock my accent and switch to better English than I could muster.

My pronunciation is pretty good. Comprehension not so much. And when I try this, I usually get hit woth the fastest French ever, as if I was a native speaker.

Same thing happened to me when I went to southern Mexico. I tried using the 3.5 years of Spanish I took and they barely even tried to humor me. At least the housekeepers were pretty chill and would indulge my not amazing Spanish lol

It means something to the effect of "I've been caught in a lie and can't keep up the act anymore"

The meaning behind the idiom is that "jig" is an old term for a trick, so you're no longer fooling the person.

Cat's out of the bag

A "jig" is a fast lively dance, usually somewhat comical in appearance.

Because jigs were often performed as comic interludes or sketches at the end of plays, the word "jig" started to mean a a piece of entertainment or a "performance."

Eventually, slang-users in Elizabethan England started using "jig" to mean a clever trick or a "con." If you were "playing a jig" on someone, you were fooling them.

"Up" means that the "time for the performance is up" or concluded. The most common way we use "up" to mean finished is in relation to time. When a clock runs out, the time is "up."

Imagine a cup being filled with water. When it reaches the brim (the top), it is full; it can’t take anymore. In the same way, when a situation or a "jig" (a trick) reaches its limit of time or tolerance, it is "up" at the brim.​

In English, we often add "up" to verbs to show that an action is finished 100%. This is known as a "completive particle" in the study of language.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20jig%20is%20up

Thanks for asking, it have been quite confusing. Like hello, hello, what can I get you, ouch busted ... 😁

A swede in France.

"I'd much rather stumble around in English than witness whatever the fuck you're about to do to my mother tongue" - the French

But yes, a simple "Parlez vous anglais?" puts most conversations firmly in friendly territory. It's entitlement that puts most people off.

when you go in with the plan of saying "one coffee please" and you know how to say it and you think you know how to pay for it, and then you get a question you don't understand after "hello", that is something i can relate to
i guess it's probably different in canada, where english is a majority language, so you can basically assume everyone speaks it, but when i was driving through germany, i first tried using my rusty german, and if/when i reached my limits, i asked if they spoke english
and also it's a challenge for oneself, i wouldn't want to take that away from people, although i can see how it can be frustrating when a long queue halts for some time due to communication issues

I’m convinced there is nothing in this world more satisfying than a hearty “TabarNAK” at just the right moment

CaaAAAAaalice

I'm french and I fucking love the sacres. It is my personal opinion that my countrymen mock québécois and its accents because they're jealous of the funny expressions and the way they can seamlessly slip some English words in any sentence with an impeccable accent.

Some words have a different meaning, they use a lot of English words, and have a unique accent. We Frenchmen can understand québécois with minimal difficulty.

Interestingly, Québécois French is less likely to use loanwords like "le weekend", preferring instead to use terms like "fin de semaine" (literally "end of the week"). In terms of vocab used, a French person is still likely to understand a Québécois French speaker (and vice versa). I can't speak for how much impact accent has on intelligibility though

Source: English person who did 8 years of French in high school, who also has a French Canadian friend

Some pronunciations are very different for sure. For example, France French says montagne (mountain) sort of like mohn-tahn-yeh, and in Montreal it's mohn-taine.

For an English speaker with no french knowledge, it's not gonna make much difference.

*tradition

Par-lay-z vouze frankaise?

Non?

That's okay, we forgive you.

What is quoi. For "what is that?" we say "C'est quoi?", which translates to "This is what?".

There are shorter ways but that's the more formal version, you can also use "que" pretty much any time you could use "qu'est-ce que".

But that sentence literally translates to “What is it that I can offer you?” That’s just normal English albeit a bit verbose.

My favorite phrase is one I made to remember the unrelated vocabulary words on a page: je suis une fermier de paumplemousse et j'aime faire de l'apinisme.

Why grapefruit, farmer, and mountain climbing were together is anyone's guess.