And that said, they know far more about North America than we know about them.
Indeed,
mon vieux.
Then you did extremely well, Bbucko.
My structure was good, and I was flattered on my accent ... but I would be kidding you if I said my linguistic origins weren't quite apparent to everyone.
Complete disclosure: My French perplexed people somewhat. They knew I wasn't Parisian or Belgian; but my fluency was so natural and mistakes of gender so few that I was presumed to be either from the south (Toulouse: my first French teacher was from the south) or, more likely, Swiss. But no one believed that I was
Amerlook.
My lover, Jean-Marc, was instrumental in this. He would batter every phrase out of my mouth until it was
parfait by his mercurial, exacting standards. Six year's study in the high school (and one very intensive month at the Alliance Française when I'd first arrived) taught me all I needed to know about the syntax and verb conjugation. But without JM's constant critiques I'd have never mastered the "ear", let alone the accent.
My access to English-language material was also very limited:
The Herald Tribune, an occasional
Newsweek and the half-dozen or so books I'd brought with me. As neither JM, nor any of his friends and family spoke enough English to feel comfortable speaking it around me, I was quickly forced to
think, not just speak, in French.
When I started dreaming in French, the rest was toast.
I spent several months in Aix, a university town which attracts a lot of American students who have come to apprendre la langue de Molière.
They were often so loud and rude, so oblivious to the fact that the French have an altogether more reserved and elegant way of impinging upon each other's space ... that I was embarrassed.
It was like an invasion of feral children.
You did well, though. Mes félicitations, Bbhucko.
It is impossible to describe how incomprehensibly inane, forward and cretinous most Americans seem to the French, but that sums it up as well as anything I've ever heard expressed in English or French.
I wasn't rude until they were rude to me. Never met such a bunch of self-satisfied pricks in my life. If French culture consists of Parisians (and plenty of Parisians think it does) then I'll be happy to see it join the Aztec on the heap of civilizations I'm happy to see erased.
On this we'll have to agree to disagree, my good friend.
The older I get, the more the world seems to divide up into those who find the French captivating and those who find them loathsome. And as much as I might disagree with the latter, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't understand their point of view.
French culture is, first of all, historic. It was considered the very epitome of elegance and refinement from the mid-17th century until well into the 20th. There was no major trend in architecture, art, fashion or design that was even remotely comparable for almost 300 years (excepting, occasionally and fleetingly, the English).
Their traditions of theater, from Moliere to Music Hall, were in advance of anything produced elsewhere (except, of course, Shakespeare). Vaudeville is, after all, a French word.
During the Second Empire, Haussman rebuilt Paris into, what has been rightfully called, the capital of the 19th Century, and is the city that remains so (coldly) beautiful today. Any discussion of the development of cinema, aeronautical development or the internal combustion engine without discussing the French is incomplete.
Their cuisine is second to none, and the availability of the highest-quality produce and meats in Paris makes New York look like one big Hamburger Heaven. Their bakeries (whether boulangeries or confiseries ) produce the best food of its type I've ever eaten.
Their wines remain among the very best produced anywhere, both in terms of quality, price and value (although when I'm especially poor, a nice Chilean red will suffice).
The French Revolution was, arguably, of much greater importance to world history than our own. They were the first people to refute absolutism and the grip of the church by abolishing monarchy and confiscating all church property (neither Henry VIII nor Cromwell went that far).
From Descartes to Foucault, has any one country been so consistent in its contributions to the field of philosophy?
As late as 1972, when I started seventh grade, we were given two options: either remedial reading or French. It didn't seem to occur to the school administrators that, at some point, I might want to converse with the rest of our hemisphere. French was the option because it was considered the second language of the world (after English). It was considered the language of diplomacy because no one else can quite say "fuck off" with such wit and style. It's still the second language of the UN.
I've always found it telling that, although the word "elite" is French, the French word for "snob" is "snob".
But no one sneers quite like a Parisian on his high horse, and no one is shriller than those horrible women who work in every boulangerie in the city (JM called them
bonnes-femmes and it was so not a compliment). They are frequently abrasive, love to argue, are frugal to the point of extreme parsimoniousness, hypochondriacs, depressive and incredibly pessimistic.
The fetishize "the innocence of childhood" and children in general to a point that I always found cloying, creepy and just a tiny bit pedo.
French popular music, with a handful of exceptions unknown outside France, Quebec and parts of Africa (maybe), is dreadful, and has been since the 1960s. And even in the music of the last "golden age", without an excellent working knowledge of French, the poetry of Brel or Brassens or Dutronc is meaningless.
Much of the "charm" of French, most especially Parisian, culture seems as stilted and affected as a minuet: the customary
bisous of four kisses, left, right, left, right is an excellent example. And without the benefit of an education into French history, all seems kinda dusty and dry and has-been.
French fashion has been meaningless since the 60s (except, occasionally, YSL). Dior and Chanel mean expensive sunglasses with gaudy logos to most people, and Louis Vuitton has been the very essence of meaningless branding since the mid-80s, at least. The average
Parisienne is no better dressed than your average shopgirl working in a mall in the suburbs of a medium-sized, mid-western city.
Contemporary French architecture is an abomination, contemporary French art is irrelevant. And French adventures in technology are, largely, failures. The Concorde stopped running years ago and their own precocious precursor to the Internet (Minitel) went nowhere (but it was all in French, so of course it would).
The antipathy Americans have for the French (and vice-versa) has certainly never been higher than it is right now, but it's symptomatic of American relations with nearly the entire world. Because of their long-standing (Imperialistic) ties with the Arab world, they didn't drink the Kool-Aid offered by the Americans and English just before we invaded Iraq and were rewarded with "Freedom Fries" (as if you and I don't both know that French Fries are Belgian). As Scott McClellan seems to have confirmed, they were right.
