How to get around in paris?

Question

i mean as in languages. I know a little bit of french, just enough to "get back home if i ever got lost" ( je peux parler un peu de francais)

Anyway, do most people speak english? ( i mean, do most restaurant waitresses or waiters speak english?)

Merci tout le monde! :)

Answer 1

On my first two trips to Paris, I didn't speak French at all.  Well, anyway, not much beyond bonjour, merci, and s'il vous plait.  I got along just fine.  On the next two trips, I had been studying French and could speak a little, so those trips went even better.  

A word of advice...when in Paris, never assume that people do or don't speak English.  It's best to ask them politely if they speak it.

Answer 2

Almost everyone in the service industry in Paris speaks at least some English.

In a survey, conducted by French market research institute IFOP for the weekly newspaper Dimanche Ouest France twelve percent of French people said they were fluent in English, six percent said they understood and spoke it well, and 48 percent said they "more or less" understood English but did not speak it fluently. Only 34 percent of those questioned said they did not speak any English.

Answer 3

Yes, most people speak English. Often, restaurants will have menus in English or English translations underneath the French. All of our waiters and waitresses spoke English to us, even if their English wasn't good - I'm sure it was much better than our French. A lot of the gift shops around the Touristy areas [Eiffel Tower, the Louvre] will automatically speak to you in English, it's kind of funny.

Also, at the ticket booths for most of the tourist places will speak English. Even if they don't know English fluently, they usually know enough and have met enough tourists to know what you're saying.