I was on vacation in Paris. It was my first two-week stay there and my first visit while speaking French at a reasonable (if modest) level.

It was my last afternoon in the city and I remembered there was a winter scarf from a shop that I had seen online and wanted to look for before I left.

As context, at the time, I was at a B1 level of French. I’ll explain more about levels below, but essentially, what I mean is that I was conversational at a basic level, able to handle many or even most situations while traveling.

It was a short walk to the store and I quickly found myself there, explaining in French what I was looking for. I’m sure the salesperson spoke English, but over the course of the two weeks, I had grown more confident in my French, and wanted to use it more often, so I took the opportunity when I could. Often, people would just instantly respond in English, which was typically excellent, and that would sometimes lead to us speaking “Franglais”, mixing French and English back and forth. But in this case, the salesperson stuck to French as he tracked down the scarf I was looking for.

As we were walking to the register so I could pay, he asked me in French where I was from. I replied in French, “You really don’t know?” He replied that no, he didn’t, but if he had to guess, he would say somewhere French-speaking, but not France.

He couldn’t have done more for my ego if he had told me I looked like a famous movie star. And I suspect that played at least a small role in my deciding that my vacation the following year would be to return to Paris for another two weeks.

Did my vacation or my shopping experiences depend on my knowledge of French? No. I believe that I would have had a wonderful time no matter what. Did my knowledge of French enrich my time in Paris? Yes. Do I believe that learning French, Italian, or another appropriate language could improve others’ luxury experiences when traveling? Yes, and I’ll dive into the why and the how below.