During the Bosnian war, my family had to go to France in order to get into the United States. I lived in Paris for about nine months before I moved, so I learned quite a bit of French. Once I attended college, I took French classes and finally got a chance to go back to Paris last year with my fiance.

When he was younger, he attended the American University of Paris, so he knew a little French himself, but I was far more fluent. When we sat down to eat at a restaurant one day near our hotel, I ordered our meal in perfect French. The waiter made small talk, asked us where we were from because I had an "interesting accent" and my fiance clearly looked Italian. I told him we traveled from the United States, which made him gape and he said "I thought Americans didn't care to learn other languages, I was wrong about your ignorance." He proceeded to give us free hors d'oeuvres throughout the meal.

I had some nice experiences in France. The French are generally nice when you try to speak French (like my fiance) just like any other country you're visiting and giving the native tongue a try.

I work at a retail outlet with high tourist traffic and we generally have customers who are visiting the United States. Most of them are from Brazil and don't even try to speak English, and they wonder why we get a little peeved when they speak Portuguese when we clearly state that we don't speak their language.