Why'd the German chick keep speaking French?

Many Europeans speak several languages. And Marthe Keller's character, Elsa, though German, was pretending to be from Switzerland, where a significant minority of people speak French. There is a scene, however, where she is telling Dustin Hoffman's character, Babe, how to spell the French word for "seal" (phoque) and she misspells it ("foc"), which was a clue that she was not really from Switzerland.

She was pretending to be Swiss, where a large percentage of the population speaks French. A lot of Swiss speak German as their first language too, but she probably chose to speak French instead of German to try to throw anyone off from her real identity.



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She could be as well from border area where people speak fluently both languages or from mixed marriage with French mother, so it would be nothing special if she preffered French even being German citizen + I guess French had better image after war than Germans in those times, so better stick with French language in new country.

Peter Markoff
The best - Fight Club, American Beauty & Falling Down.

Obviously, to conceal her identity. Twat!