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  French people don’t speak in English even if they are good at the language. That’s what I was told when I was enjoying small talk with my colleagues from overseas, one from Britain and the other from the U.S.
  The Brit told me about his bitter experiences he’d had to go through travelling in France when he was a backpacker fresh from a Univ. He tried to communicate with French people he met, who he knew were able to speak English, but they didn’t seem to feel inclined to use his language – English and they looked so unfriendly that he gave up trying to exchange words with them as he was not strong in French. Ever since, he said he had developed some sense of antipathy toward “frog eaters” as some people refer derogatively to French people as. Well, he was practising the English proverb – He who hates Peter harms his dog. – when he said ‘ I don’t like French people. I don’t like French, the language either.’ That made me feel sad. Incidentally, we Japanese do have the saying that means the same - `坊主憎けりゃ袈裟まで憎い’ literally put, if you hate a Buddhist monk, you will also hate his surplice.
  Are French people biased against English?
The guy from the U.S. also told me about his unlucky experiences with French people he’d met in Paris, who made faces when he tried to communicate in French (at which he was poor, he said). So he had no other choice for communication but to speak in English, which made the French people make faces again. He looked disappointed and discouraged even as he explained to me the experience he’d had in Paris.
  Now, getting back to the two young lovely women, who looked at a loss when I asked them if it was all right for me to speak in English. They did look at a loss. But, why? Because, I thought, based on the talks I’d had with my colleagues back then that these French women must simply be reluctant to speak English. But, I was totally wrong as I would later discover.