Is french actually better for making friends in Basel?
Before moving to Switzerland, I read EVERYWHERE that if you want to integrate and make friends, you should speak German. I'm fluent, so I thought I would be good. However, my office is over-represented with young people who speak multiple languages (recruiters, sales managers).
I have found that almost ALL of them speak french, german and english to varying degrees. I have also found that if 2 people are conversational in french, the default language of the conversation becomes french. This is the case regardless of whether it is their first language or how many other languages they speak. Has anyone else experienced this? Why is that?
I found most professionals in german speaking switzerland speak at least some level english, so I never felt my German helped me connect with people. However, not speaking french is making me expressively feel left out.
I can get a couple german guys to have a group conversation in english no problem even if we all also speak german. However, I found that if there are at least 2 french speaking people in the conversation, things usually devolve into french at some point.
The most annoying thing is, we don't even service the french speaking customers/parts of switzerland, that's a different business unit. Everyone just also happens to speak french, we don't actually need it for work.
Alternatively, how do I keep french from cannibalizing my office small talk?