That's totally a cliche. Everywhere in the world you can meet people that : 1. Only speak their native language. 2. Speak several languages but not yours. 3. Speak your language but are assholes. 4. Speak your language but are afraid of talking because they are afraid of sounding ridiculous. 5. Are very happy to speak your language. 6. Hate your country for absurd reasons. 7. Love your country for absurd reasons.

Nowadays young frenchs learn english by overexposition to the language through various medias (school is of no help) and in the past, even if english was taught at school, I think the majority of them didn't learn it properly beyond "my taylor is rich", "The cat is happy" and "I love you".

I didn't "learn" english and it is a mystery why I can express myself and understand others in this language, I guess I have been overexposed to the language when I was young.

That said, I worked in museums at a time in my life and was actually surprised by the huge amount of people travelling in the world with no knowledge of the language of the country they are in, expecting everybody to be able to talk their language like if it was universal, be them italians, frenchs, americans, chinese or whatever.