[trchek]

I understand everyone has different experiences and I have the advantage of having personal experience to the contrary so I don’t judge this opinion, I knew people where I grew up that believed this to be fact.

To better inform everyone their are plenty of French laws and announcements that are translated to English ( I moved there right before Covid and had to rely on said services at first ).

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/R2771?l...

And they provide state news services in various languages including English

https://www.france24.com/en/ https://www.rfi.fr/en/

More complicated for your argument is there are parts of the USA that have had Spanish as the primary language since they joined the USA. San Antonio, Texas for example I don’t believe has ever been majority anglophone and it doesn’t become more anglophone the further south you go. My wife’s family has been in Texas since it was Spain, and they only in very recent generations switched to English primarily.

I’m not sure if you find any of this convincing, but I hope at least realize it is a bit more complicated than you may have realized.

[huhkerrf]

> To better inform everyone their are plenty of French laws and announcements that are translated to English

This is not the point. The point is that there should not be an expectation. French is the language of France. Moving there and expecting people to communicate you in English is not something we should be celebrating.

> San Antonio, Texas for example I don’t believe has ever been majority anglophone

This is not true. 2/3rds of San Antonio households speak English at home. Then you add in people who speak another language at home but still speak English.

https://satxtoday.6amcity.com/most-common-languages-san-anto...

[alxlaz]

This isn't about expecting "people" to communicate to you in a language they don't speak, it's about expecting state institutions to communicate in their citizens' language. French public institutions definitely use languages other than French where it's regionally relevant. It's not mandated (only French language is mandated) but they do it because when you take taxpayers money to function and provide services to them, you don't get to be fussy when they show up and ask that you speak their language.

France is in a league of its own in this regard, since French is not just the official state language (and has been for some time, not a few weeks like in the US), but it's also the mandated language for commercial and business use. However, the French state doesn't just mandate that, it also creates the conditions for it, for instance by providing (and requiring) free, universal French-language elementary education for all its citizens.

And even so, they're still not universally French-only, even though they're probably the most centralist of all EU countries in this regard.

[trchek]

Re France listen the French are super duper proud of their language and rightfully so, it’s still practical to communicate to your residents important information.

Re San Antonio, they actually are counting the metro area which brings in a lot of white suburbs and throws the numbers off a lot but in the interest of being balanced, let’s say I’ll concede the point.

There are still a lot of US citizens in San Antonio that speak Spanish primarily, I think you’d be surprised by this, I know I was the first 200 times I met someone like that, lots of people there with roots back several generations still speaking with English with an accent.