Today, it was my first day at school in the United States. Being from France, my French accent is really strong. After being made fun of all day, I met someone from Montreal. I was so excited and said, "Parlez-vous Français?" And his response? "HUH?!" FML
Collection
Autumn: Leaves and Laughter
When the leaves fall, the laughter rises. Discover autumn stories as crisp as dried leaves!
Today, I had a presentation in French class. I was so nervous, the first thing I said when I got up there was, "Hola." FML
Today, I got a phone call, and the person on the other line started speaking French. I assumed it was my friend, since we usually speak French with each other, so I said in French, "What do you want, asshole?" It wasn't my friend. It was a representative for the exchange program I'm applying for. FML
Today, I tried to impress a French student by saying “Bonjour!” but instead said “Bordel!” which means “Brothel.” She laughed, and so did every one of the french students around us. My cultural street cred is officially dead. FML
Today, I began taking a French language class. After completing and submitting some homework, I got a response. A response that was completely in French. I can't understand shit. FML
Today, I was talking to my best friend about a cute guy that girls are afraid to even speak to, so I then decided to march right up to him and say hello. When he smiled at me, I stood there with my mouth wide open, but I made non-coherent words. He asked me if I was a foreign exchange student. FML
Today, my friend started his first day of work with me. I thought it'd be fun, but he's been putting on an obnoxious fake French accent and saying "merde" whenever anything goes wrong. Half the women at the office want his dick, and I'm still as single as ever. FML
Today, I saw one of my favorite hockey players in public. I had met him once before, and to my shock, he remembered me. I was pretty excited until he started talking to his friend in French. He didn't seem to realize that I'm fluent in the language. He basically called me "ugly psycho bitch." FML
Today, on my first day of being a trainee teacher in a classroom, I told a boy to stop using that stupid accent or else I'll give him a detention. Turns out he just moved here from Romania. FML
Today, I gave a presentation to a group of international clients. Wanting to impress them, I tried to say "Thank you" in their language, which I thought was Portuguese. Turns out, I was speaking Spanish to a room full of French Canadians. Their confused faces were priceless. FML
Today, while working alone, I decided to just try some random impressions, and so I ended up doing a French accent when a customer walked in. To avoid embarrassment, I had to continue faking the accent as he struck up a long conversation with me. FML
Feel like sharing it with the other FML users?
Thank you, your FML was submitted, and will appear the moderation soon!
Top comments
SunnyUserName123 5
Aww, you'll make friends eventually :D
Freeze_fml 16
Most people will find your accent attractive.
Add a comment · Reply to
You must be logged in to be able to post comments!
Comments (328)
shadowPlayer 6
Montreal French is different from France French. Plus, your accent would have been really heavy. My dad speaks France French with a Lux accent, he has issues understanding Canadian French too.
andreamad 2
I'm an anglophone from Montreal, but I speak fluent French on a daily basis and at work.....though most people do understand French in Montreal, a few hundred thousand people don't! (about 70 000 people don't even speak French OR Englsih, go figure :)) Stay strong, you'll eventually make good friends and you'll be able to ignore the people who are teasing you for your accent!
ReynshineCutting 10
What do they speak? I haven't had hardly any experience with Canadian culture so I don't know what other languages people speak there.
Jasper8713 2
Canada is extremely multicultural, especially in the larger cities. In certain areas, you are much more likely to hear any number of Asian dialects, Italian, German (German's HUGE near where I grew up).... Northern Ontario has a large Finnish population... Russian and Ukrainian are pretty big too. I know of a school in Toronto that has a flag for every country with a student representative... And there are something like 80 flags. So yeah. We're pretty multicultural.
hero3460 3
Sorry for your first day in the US. Hope u enjoy your stay
OfficeNinja 5
look at it this way. you can call people stupid idiots, and in French it will sound like something nice and complementary.
drakey95 0
How do you know English?
Rdc13 7
Don't worry, it's not you, it's just them. People can't make fun of you just because you're from a different country
MyPerspective 4
It's okay. Haters hate. You just ignore them, they're just immature.
kiakia0131 23
I'm sorry that people from my country are assholes who don't try to help out an international student. I would have done my best to help you out (try to speak some basic French I learned back in middle school). I would never make fun of you. It must be really hard being away from your home country. It also must be frustrating that people don't seem to be understanding that English is not your native language. FYL OP. Hope things get better. :)
WadeWilson_fml 6
...french..
SpiralDementia_fml 6
Salut!! Je suis de Montréal et j'ai eu exactement le même problème que toi. Mon accent québécois peut s'avérer tout à fait incompréhensible pour l'Américain moyen :P Je te souhaite bonne chance!
5t3ff1k4h 44
Average Americans don't usually learn French... I think they learn Spanish in schools. That aside, there are vast differences between Quebecois French and Parisian French... it's almost unbelievable how they're the same language, yet so different between the two countries. Bon chance, OP!
SpiralDementia_fml 6
Yes, I know Americans don't learn french in school :) What I said is that most people don't understand me when I speak english, because of my accent... I'm getting better though! Also, the difference between french from France and "le québécois" is not that big. Only the accent and the slangs are different. However, there's something strange: Quebecers seems to understand french people from France much easier. I think it's because here, in Québec, we watch movies and tv shows translated in France, but it doesn't go the other way around! Sorry for my bad english by the way :3
5t3ff1k4h 44
No problem! :) That's what I mean, all the slang and the figures of speech between the two of them are insanely different. And because we're pretty casual as it is (at least in my experience in both French and English) - we use a lot of slang which leads to it being very hard to understand one another.