Tag: culture

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Culture France

Back from the USA

For the record, I really was Born in the USA, and I know what that Springsteen song is really about!

I was in Denver, and for a few hours, in Las Vegas, for the past two weeks. Yesterday I mostly sat like a lump wondering what happened (if you’ve never travelled 8 or 9 time zones east overnight, you might think I was being lazy or something.) Today, I’m back, mostly, and here are some impressions of the USA after I was away for over fifteen months.

First, those commercials! Many Americans report being anxious and worried, and I think I know why. Good grief, you can’t even see an ad for a sandwich without hearing YOU JUST HAVE TO BUYL THIS BURGER!!!!

Uh, sure. I guess. And that’s just for one sandwich at one fast food joint. You know, folks, psychological research has determined that upset people buy more stuff, so do you think it’s a coincidence that the news, and even the ads, are designed to keep you on edge? Do you? Hmmm? There are plenty of ads in France, but few are edgy. Some are funny. And I remember one that involved singing vaginas. No kidding, and one of them was attached to a real human. That was odd, even for France, but not upsetting. Are the children of France morally destroyed after seeing that? I just report, you decide. I’ve noticed a lot of American ads that seem to set the viewer up for disappointment. For instance, no matter how nice a car you buy, you’ll never get to park directly in front of the opera house and walk in smiling. It just ain’t gonna happen. Also, one car is a lot like another, no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, and the traffic is just as terrible in a Lexus as it is in a ’68 Superbeetle. It sucks in French cities, too, but no car ad suggests that it’s particular brand will offer any relief. They simply ignore the unpleasant parts of automobile ownership.

America bustles compared to rural France, but then I suppose it bustles compared to rural America. It feels good to be able to slow down a bit and catch my breath, as it were.

Americans really do talk loudly, although I can say from local (in my village) experience that Brits talk louder. Still, French people frown on loud speech in public, and I noticed the difference. It didn’t bother me (I was born there, remember) but I did notice a higher volume. This, I suppose, goes along with the general level of anxiety, or maybe the music they play in restaurants, as French restaurants don’t have any background sound playing. And, to be fair, the worst experience, noise-wise, I’ve had in France was in Paris, in a restaurant with a table full of drunken French people.

Which brings up another phenomenon. Americans drink more than the French. And, in America, being drunk is laughed at. In France, it’s severely discouraged. Nobody in that restaurant was laughing about those drunks in the corner. Alcohol is important here, but drinking too much is a big no-no. And, quick aside, beer has replaced wine as the top selling alcohol in France. True story. A lot of bars sell Budweiser, in fact.

American roads are generally better, in the sense that they are roomier and easier to navigate. That’s the good part, because they’re also in a lot worse shape in terms of rough pavement and potholes.

All that said, the people are remarkably similar. If you’re nice to them, they’re nice right back to you. In America that means saying Hi or something similar and smiling a lot. In France you can skip the smile, but do say hello, which is in fact bonjour. In both countries we found plenty of helpful people, and of course a few, uh, you know. Mostly, though, everyone is pretty nice on either side of the Atlantic, and that’s encouraging.

I’ll be back with more next week. Some things America does well, and poorly, coming soon to a browser near you!

Ciao!*

*Ciao is a typical way for friends to say goodbye in France, and yes, that is Italian.

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Culture France language

The French Languages

A Real Book. A Long History. Written in French. Sigh.

You may think I’m going to talk about dialects of French, and there certainly are a lot of them to consider. French is spoken as a native language in the Carribean, in Canada, in Africa, and in Polynesia plus some other places. But, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that, whatever dialect you speak, you probably will need to learn two French languages. Spoken French (not too awful) and Written French (too awful.)

To begin with, let me show you a few letter combinations you can write to represent the sound we call a “long A”.

è, é, ai, ait, er (on the end of a word), and several more if you can believe it. Now, about the plain old e. It’s a schwa (the linguists term for it) which means it’s just a generic vowel mostly considered unworthy of being pronounced, especially if it is at the end of a word. Chien, is pronounced sort of like shieh. It means Dog, masculine or just generically. Chiene is pronounced sort of like “she-en” and means Dog, feminine. Many times, a vowel with an e on the end of it is the feminine form of an otherwise masculine word. If you see an unaccented e on the end of a word, never pronounce it. If you do, the members of Richlieu’s Academy will probably come threaten you with their swords, and maybe send you to their secret jail somewhere. (Kidding)

French, like English, changes verb forms depending on who’s doing it. I run, you run, he runs, that sort of thing. They run, easy enough. In French that phrase looks like ils courent. The word “to run” is courer. Keep up, now. To run sounds like “Cou-ray”. I run sounds like “Cour” (there is an s on the end of the word.) courent sonds just like cours. Yep, ent means absolutely nothing to how one pronounces the word in French, but it absolutely must be put there if you’re writing it out. L’academie français, founded by that famous Cardinal Richlieu, keeps a tight grip on written French. But, being a free country, French people say whatever they want to.

For example, if you take French, they’ll tell you that “I don’t know” is Je ne sais pas. Sounds sort of like Zhe nay say pah. But, forget that. Write it, but in speaking it, I kid you not, what comes out sounds a lot like Zhay Pah. In French, even under current rules, you could write that out as J’ai pas, but don’t ever do that, or the ghost of every retired French grammar teacher will haunt you to your grave. (J’ai pas, by the way, could be translated as “I have nothing.” That would even work, wouldn’t it?)

This, then, is a warning. study your academic French well. You’ll need that, if only to fill out government paperwork (or to read government paperwork) but remember to speak the way French people do, in what is, pretty much, an entirely different language.

Categories
Culture France

“Just Go With It!”

Inside Orleans Cathedral, May 2022

I was out on a walk in the country today with some new friends (acquaintances in France, I suppose) when I mentioned the fact that some French cultural norms drive me nuts. One of my walking companions provided the suggestion that I am using to title this post. A good idea, I suppose. Just go with it. I mean, what are you gonna do? Sue? Let me cite an example.

As you may have read, my Surface Pro 4 battery died. I got a new battery and took it to a shop in Angouleme that advertises that it can fix any sort of device. Well, their technician said “no” and they sent me to another place (after about a week.) That place, after about the same amount of time told me that their technician said that fixing it was “impossible” because one has to remove the screen. This is not true, although it was true of earlier models. I cracked the screen on a Surface Pro 3 myself. For the 4 and newer, one removes the back. It isn’t easy: 58 steps, rated “difficult.” But, it can be done. Misinformed? Simply don’t want to fix the thing? Well, maybe. In France, you almost always start by saying that something is impossible. “Walk across the street? Impossible!” Then the other person (me in this case) argues, and you go back and forth, and oh, hell, after a while maybe “no” becomes “yes.” For me though, it just wasn’t worth it. See, the first place first told me that they couldn’t find the battery. I bought one for 50 Euros from Amazon. Then they sent me over. They told me there that their tech was out of town, then a week later that he said it was impossible. If the aim was to wear me down, it worked. I shall attempt to replace that battery myself. Might as well, even though my wife bought me a new laptop on Amazon Prime Day last week, which, as you can maybe tell, works just fine.

For me, a misinformed American, being led around like I was is grounds for never speaking to any of those people again. But, this is France. That’s the way they do things. I used to be a computer systems guy, so I actually have a decent chance of getting that new battery installed and the old tablet working again. A Surface Pro tablet is kind of fun, doesn’t take up much room, and you can get a decent docking station for it and use it as a desktop, which of course is just what I did, for years. So I might as well have a go. If I weren’t knowledgeable in computers and their various quirks, I don’t know what I’d do. Probably just buy a replacement first thing. But, I strongly suspect that, had I persisted long enough, I’d have gotten one of those places to put the battery in for me. For the record, I don’t blame them for not wanting to, but as an American, I say just tell me that. What the hey, you don’t have to fix anything you don’t want to, do you? Does anybody? No, outside of peon-level jobs, nobody does.

I am not complaining, just illustrating a prime difference between French and American culture. In France, the blunt, plain-spoken American response (Sorry, we just can’t fix that old thing ’cause it’s just too damn old) would sound impolite. Saying it’s “Impossible” doesn’t. Get it? Yeah, me neither, but I’m going with it. When in Rome, er, Angouleme, right?

This gives me a prime opportunity to plug frequent backups, preferably to the cloud. (Off-site, as we used to say.) I was able to post here using a Kindle Fire HD 8, a device I like to call the “Windows 98 of tablets” because, technically, it does work. I use Microsoft OneDrive, and Word automatically saves my work for me in real time. I never have to worry about it. I was able to edit an ongoing book project, again with my Kindle, because I had full access to all of my files and data, right there in the cloud. You don’t have to use OneDrive. There are several other services offering the same results, but you should, you really, really should, set up something to do that for you. Local external drive is okay, but if I’d had that I wouldn’t have been able to use my little (cheap) tablet to do any work. I love storage on the cloud, and if you have anything you care about and don’t want to lose, that’s where you should keep it!

End of lecture. Thanks for reading!