TRAVELLERS may love France for its towering Eiffel and romantic Louvre, but not the country’s natives, as AsiaOne reported.
A poll conducted by Skyscanner revealed that the French have been voted by 1,200 of its respondents as the rudest nation.
The French took the biggest share of the pie – at 19 per cent – for being “abrupt and curt,” it said in a press release.
The Russians came a close second at 17 per cent, while the British were third at 10 per cent.
China emerged fourth on the list, leading the pack in Asia.
But the website attributed the rankings to differences in culture more than genuine rudeness.
Case in point: “Russians can be more direct when talking, which may be misconstrued as being rude,” explained Tatiana Danilova, Russian market manager for Skyscanner.
“The Russian language is not as polite as English, so when Russians translate directly from Russian to English, it can sound rude to an English speaker even if they don’t mean it to.
On the other hand, the “Russians tend to consider British people extremely polite due to their courteous way of speaking,” she said.
Skyscanner marketing manager for China, Yi Bao, gave another example to back the cultural difference theory.
He said, while queuing is a social norm in the West, it’s not a common behavior for Chinese people, “so (it) could be interpreted as being rude (by international travellers).”