eskandar wrote:it doesn't matter how well you speak French. If you're not a native speaker and make mistakes, no matter how intelligible you are, people look down on you and give you a hard time
Maybe I've been lucky so far, but I can't really relate to that.
Sure, the French can be a little impatient if you're a beginner (or if you try to speak English to them), but once your level improves they suddenly become much friendlier. I speak decent French (although I'm sure I have an accent and still make plenty of mistakes) and I've gotten random compliments from people in Paris.
eskandar wrote:No, the exact opposite of Indians in the sense that, as a non-Indian, from day one of learning Hindi/Urdu, I've always been met with enthusiasm and encouragement from Indians, no matter how little I knew or how bad my pronunciation was at the start.
The Chinese tend to be like that too. Frankly, while that can be encouraging at the beginning, after a while it becomes a bit irritating
No matter how bad you speak or how crappy your pronunciation is, they'll never correct you and always say something like "Oh, your xxx is so good!", which is clearly not true.