The South of France

I thought, in the interest of promoting cultural understanding, I would share some of my observations of the French since living here in the Alpes-Maritime region. While reading this post please remember, these are my observations and not meant to be indicative of the entire population and country.

I know that this post may disappoint a lot of people back home, but the French are NOT as rude as you may have been led to believe. I would say that they tend to be a bit more reserved and quieter than Americans, not as openly friendly perhaps, if that makes sense. They do seem to be very proud of their culture, especially of their language; they expect you to use (and fairly so), and it seems the vast majority of expats (mostly UK, some Kiwis and Aussies, and two bewildered Americans) down here do.

If you lead with English, forget it, the vast majority will respond in French, so you will get nowhere. However, they don't expect someone to be fluent; but I have noticed that the better one's French, the better the service tends to be. And once you have frequented a shop a couple of times and the shopkeeper recognizes you as a regular, they are very friendly and helpful.

If you lead with French and give it a go, if you are really struggling, a lot of times they will try to be helpful, with a combination of improvised sign language, writing, and/or English. There are a small minority that I think do take pleasure in watching you struggle. And there is an even smaller number that I have run across that I think play dumb when you mispronounce words and will act as if they don't know what you are trying to say.

What I tend to do now, is to write up a script, especially when I may be shopping for something. That way, if I am really hacking it, and the person does not know what I am saying, I just point to it and say "Ce". Or "Cette". Or "C'est". Whatever, it is a tougher language to learn than I thought. Anyways, this has been helpful on several occasions.

Part of the problem that I have with learning French is the pronunciation. There are quite a French words (spelling and definition) that are in English. This makes sense, since what we call English was a result of combining Anglo-Saxon (Olde English I think) with Norman French. But the vowels and consonants are pronounce differently, which gives me a lot of problems. To me, every word in English has a beginning and an end, definitive notes or staccato if you will. But French pronunciation is softer and it sounds (to me at least) like words are slurred together or legato.

Like I said above, the French tend to be quieter and more reserved than what I am used to. Therefore, when visiting France, try to be aware of your volume level, and adjust as necessary. Hey, if an O'Driscoll can do it, anyone can. Trust me when I say that loud Americans stand out, and not in a good way. ESPECIALLY young American females that use the word "like" as a noun, verb, adjective, preposition, etc.

One thing that I have learned about the French, is that they tend to be big savers and if they don't have the money for something, they will do without until they can save the money. Old school household finance. I think part of this is cultural and part is due to the fact that credit is a lot tighter here; there are more stringent requirements. Although there has not been the credit meltdown here that has been occurring in the USA, a couple of their banks have been tagged by investing in those SIV thingies (Society Generale being one of them, which happens to be our bank here).

Note: When you go to a restaurant, NEVER call the waiter "garcon". Garcon means boy. Don't know how this came to be, but in the interest of diplomatic relations, use Monsier or Madame when speaking to the waiter/waitress.

Note: If you were wondering, teenagers are the same in the US, the UK, and France. They talk funny, they dress funny, and they have funny haircuts. Pull up your effing pants!. The western world is doomed.