Ma Vie in France

As a follow up to my post on les bises, I’d like to talk more about an aspect of French that ties in ideas of language and culture: the tu versus vous distinction, both translated by the pronoun ‘you’ in English. In any French class, you will learn this distinction very early on, and will be told, more or less, that tu is an informal way of addressing someone, whereas vous is formal (or used for plural you, as in ‘you all’). For example, about.com suggests the following uses of each: Tu   is the familiar "you," which demonstrates a certain closeness and informality. Use   tu   when speaking to one ·          friend ·          peer / colleague ·          relative ·          child ·          pet Vous   is the formal "you." It is used to show respect or maintain a certain distance or formality with someone. Use   vous   when speaking to ·          someone you don't know well ·          an older person ·          an authority figure

Many Americans discover when coming to France that the French have a strong opinion on American politics. Sometimes, the French view can even come off as abrasive or accusatory. It took me a while to figure out that discussing politics here is a national pastime, and that people aren't necessarily always as informed as they appear. Rather, arguing and discussing politics is well, something you learn to talk about. Once at a party this year I had a conversation with a French girl who had spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania. “Young Americans don’t talk about politics…at all!” she exclaimed, implying that this would be a typical topic of conversation for young French people.   So, on this topic and in light of the recent American election, I’d like to take some time to talk about American politics as viewed in France, then on the topic of politics and current affairs in general in France. As I said, French people have a very strong opinion in general about American polit

This semester I’ve had the pleasure of teaching a course that compares French/American culture.  During my research for this class, I discovered a new book on the subject of French/American relations by Pascal Baudry, called French and Americans: The Other Shore . Baudry, like many people who have written on the French/American topic, has extensive experience in both the US and France, and previously worked as a psychoanalyst in France. Baudry’s book is essentially written for the French, to explain to them their own culture and help them understand some of the basic foundations of American culture. One of his ideas that I’ve found particularly intriguing is the concept of implicit vs. explicit culture.   Baudry claims that French culture is inherently implicit, meaning that there are many codes that are not transparent to the uninitiated observer. This is contrasted with American culture, which is much more explicit. This idea of implicitness permeates many facets of French life

In this post, I’d like to attempt a humble comparison between what I know about French culture and what I observed on a summer trip to Germany this summer (Munich in particular). grounds of the Schloss Nymphenburg Some of the highlights of our trip were a tour of the Munich city center, a visit to the Neuschwanstein castle and surrounding area, and a visit to the Dachau concentration camp. We also ate a lot of great food, and of course, drank a lot of beer. Although I realize we really ate at quite a few tourist spots, the food was always hearty and filling. We also had a Bavarian breakfast one morning, including sausage, pretzels and beer. For me, the simple goodness and heartiness of the food felt like the mentality around us, people were open, direct and generally friendly. In France, food is such a complex affair, still regulated by traditions that date back to Louis XIV. That’s one of the things I love about France, but I think it also reflects the mentality of the Frenc

After the all the time I’ve spent in France, teaching French and studying French, I’ve become used to many things that surprised me in my earlier stages of study. Every once in a while, though, I’ll learn a piece of information about France that is totally new and catches me off guard. This week, I had one of these moments. In talking to university students, we were on  the subject of grandes écoles (already a strange concept to non-French citizens). I was asking students to name the different, most well-known grandes écoles. These are our equivalent to Ivy League schools. They listed the names quickly and briefly, using acronyms and single words because the names are so common and obvious to them. There is one school out of this group that really sticks out: Polytechnique, also just called X (which I also learned this week, hence the clever title of this post). Not only is it, from what I understand, the institution for higher education relating to the sciences, but it’

Imagine the scene. You arrive at a house or an apartment for a party. It’s loud and hard to hear over conversations and music playing in the background. You only know one or two people in the entire room. If this scene were to happen in the U.S., you would probably walk in, say hello to the host or whoever greeted you at the door, and find the person who invited you. If you wanted, throughout the evening, you could drift in and out of different conversations, and sometimes introduce yourself to people, maybe shaking hands. If this scene were to happen in France, there would be a key difference: just after arriving at the party, you would go around the room and systematically kiss every person on each cheek, saying something to the effect of “Hi, (your name).” These kisses in France are called “les bises,” and the act of greeting people with kisses is known as the expression “faire les bises” (make/do kisses, the translation ends up sounding a little odd…). My description above ma

As I found when I first moved to France, you don’t have to look far for ‘cultural’ or artistic events and activities. One great example is a parade I attended this past weekend which was the opening ceremony for a Biannual Dance festival. I went to the parade knowing that it mostly highlighted performances from local dance studios. I don’t know much about dance, but the performances were really surprising to me. Obviously hours had been poured into the choreography of the different groups, the costumes, the timing, the music, and I thought on the whole it was really well done. What surprised me, though, was that for a very big, well advertised parade the choice of dance was contemporary, and at times, just plain weird. In my mind, contemporary art in any form remains fairly inaccessible to the general public. This kind of thing doesn’t shock people here, but I have a feeling it would be less well received in the US. The question is, why? Not so much why wouldn’t a French person f

The past two weeks in France could seem strange to a tourist visiting the country: within days streets that were empty for weeks while most of the country was on vacation all of a sudden became busy again. It’s that time of year again: back to school!  La rentrée (literally the return, or rather, start of the school year) is no small matter in France. Rather than a progressive return to school over the course of a month or so (as I would describe the process in the U.S.), back to school in France happens all on the same day (September 4 this year).  This, like many other things in France, is due to high centralization and the massive establishment that is known as l’éducation nationale. In keeping with the cultural interest of this blog, I’d like to begin to dig into this beast that is l’éducation nationale. As a foreigner, I’ve been lucky to get an inside look into the school system here, both at the high school and university levels. I’m convinced, from what I’ve seen so

This summer, I attended my first French wedding. In many ways it closely resembled what I would consider a typical American service: big white dress for the bride, ceremony at the church, pictures that seemed to take way too long… There was one major difference, however. Unlike the U.S., a wedding held in France outside of the town hall (our equivalent of a court- house) is not considered valid. Every couple must first proceed to the town hall to be married by a state-appointed officiant, and then can have a religious ceremony if they choose. For this particular wedding, the bride was from a small town where the officiant had known her and her family since she was little. Still, there was a slight ‘assembly line’ feel to the wedding, since we had to wait for the 3:00 wedding to leave the town hall, and after, had to make room for the 5:00 wedding. All huddled into the small ‘wedding room’ (standing room only for most wedding guests), we listened to what appeared to me as

Can we ever really compare cultures? Is it fruitful to say the US does X, and France does Y? In a conversation with a friend the other day, he brought up that this comparison between France and the US is like comparing apples and oranges. And yet, it's something I hear French people constantly do, and something I'm obviously doing in this blog. So is this a useful exercise, or are we just looking to draw parallels that don't exist? It's true that every culture is unique and I think can only be fully grasped in its context. When taken out of this, it becomes meaningless, or much harder to decode. I think of my students watching American films and series and not catching many of the social codes because it's not understood in context, with enough background on American culture. We can say that this is where stereotypes come from. After all, as Raymonde Carroll puts it well in her book Evidences Invisibles , stereotypes are really just examples of misu