Understanding the French (1)

I have always liked La Rochelle ever since my first visit in 1996, I like the sea food restaurants, the patiseries, the busy harbour and the leisurely pace of life; so much so in fact that I have visited four times, the last being in 2007.

Our final day in La Rochelle (19^th April) began exactly the same as the day before.  A Hotel Ibis breakfast and then out into the city bathed in a soft blue sky and the early morning sun burning off the remains of the sea dew.  It was going to be another fine day.  We decided to explore the town today and set off first to do that thing that has become a bit of a ritual and go and visit the local market.   And it was a very good one indeed, just the place to get our market envy fix.  The meat hall was full of interesting produce alongside the usual including big portions of wild boar, whole rabbits and bits of chickens that it certainly wouldn’t occur to us to eat. These included heads and feet, and like most people from England I always thought that the chicken leg stopped just below that meaty piece of thigh meat.  Shoppers would have a fit in England but the French seem to have an appetite for the most unusual.

In the fish market, once again as with everywhere else we have been the variety and quantity was eye-popping, there were slabs and slabs of oysters all carefully graded by size from number one to number six and the breathtaking amount of shellfish and crustaceans simply served to confirm that the French will eat anything that swims, crawls or slithers through the sea.  Outside the vegetable stalls offered appetizing produce that was all arranged in spectacular displays with much more attention to detail and presentation than we had seen elsewhere.

Out of the town we sat in a green park and ate strawberries that we had purchased in the market and were startled by the most amazingly loud croaking noise, so loud we took it to be a man with one of those duck decoy whistles but when we investigated further we located the noise from the river and were surprised to find some frogs swimming about and making a really astonishing amount of noise for such small creatures.  Obviously not very bright either because given the French habit of eating practically anything and being especially fond of these little amphibian’s succulent legs you’d have thought that they might have learned over the years not to draw so much attention to themselves.

The French Language

“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”  Mark Twain – ‘The Innocents Abroad’

Eventually an old lady in an extravagant floral blouse and with a worn out old dog for a companion appeared from an adjacent room and enquired if we were there for the tour and we told her that yes we were.  She went to a great deal of trouble to explain that her English was poor and clutching her stomach she told us that her doctor had advised her against speaking in English because this made her ill. I’m not a medical person but this seemed a bit unlikely to me and she had no credible explanation for a diagnosis of stomach cramps just through speaking English and as we set off she proceeded to speak perfectly even though it was in a hushed and croaky voice.

This was really excellent, we were the only people on the tour and we were getting an exceptional commentary all around the interior and the exterior of the Cathedral. But then disaster struck as party of French people gate-crashed the party and after a short debate about language preferences with these unwelcome latecomers she continued for the rest of the tour in about 75% French.

She apologised to us for that and lamented that “English people cannot speak French and French people will not speak English!” This shouldn’t have surprised us of course, we know how precious they can be about their secondary World language so we just had to accept the inevitable and struggle to make sense of the French and be grateful for the few snippets of English that infrequently came our way.

‘The problem is not that French is impossible to learn: you can hear it spoken perfectly in Tunisia, Algeria or Morocco. No, the real problem with French is that it is a useless language’. Jeremy Paxman (UK Journalist)

There is no good reason for the French to be so stuck-up about their language, after all it is only the eighteenth most used in the World, Chinese is first, followed by Spanish and then English. More people even speak Portuguese (sixth) and worst of all German (tenth). The French, it seems, need to come to terms with the balance of linguistic power.

The French are proud of their language of course and their reluctance to communicate in or even simply acknowledge English gives me the opportunity to demonstrate my fluency in everyday essentials when I am in a restaurant:

Vin blanc sil vous plait’                                                                                                                ‘Vin rouge sil vous plait’                                                                                                            ‘bier grande sil vous plait’                                                                                                        ‘bier grande vite’.                                                                                                                                   And so on.

Now the French don’t especially like making things easy for visitors and sometimes I get the distinct impression that they would rather not have us in their country at all and a restaurant in La Rochelle on 17^th April 2007 was no exception as it was clear that they could barely tolerate us.

The menu was exclusively in French (I’ve no objection to that – we don’t have multi-lingual menus in the UK) which made meal selection a little challenging but we were not put off by this because we have tackled menus in Latvian, Croatian and Polish and by comparison this was a piece of cake. I attempted some multilingual conversation with the waiter but he was clearly not impressed and I gave up therefore when he announced with the hint of a sneer that passed for an apology that there were no mussels left tonight.

We ordered an alternative and then we had an incident over condiments. He didn’t provide us with any and forced us to request them in what little French we knew while he kept up a bulwark against international relations while steadfastly refusing to understand us. We got passed salt and pepper but got stuck on vinegar.  I tried in several different ways of pronunciation and even mimed shaking a bottle but this fellow totally refused to comprehend and brought us a selection of various sauce accompaniments but never any vinegar.

I am convinced he knew exactly what we wanted but was enjoying watching us struggle. We finished our meal and left and I made a point of collecting up every last cent of change and didn’t leave him a tip and we agreed that we wouldn’t be dining there again this week.

One way around this problem is to rehearse in advance what you want to say. On another visit to France, this time to Boulogne in 2009 we needed some postage stamps so I rehearsed over and again ‘quatre timbre sil vous plait’ and by the time we found a shop was practically word perfect.  The problem with this of course is that having impressed with the opening sentence then the shop assistant replies immediately in impenetrable French and the only two options are to nod vigorously and hope you are making the appropriate response or just stand there flapping and looking a complete twat!  I did a combination of the two and it must have worked because I got the stamps and they were the correct ones for postcards to England. Merci beaucoup!

A Life in a Year – 19th April, The Curious Culinary Habits of the French

I have always liked La Rochelle ever since my first visit in 1996, I like the sea food restaurants, the patiseries, the busy harbour and the leisurely pace of life; so much so in fact that I have visited four times, the last being in 2007.

Our final day in La Rochelle (19^th April) began exactly the same as the day before.  A Hotel Ibis breakfast and then out into the city bathed in a soft blue sky and the early morning sun burning off the remains of the sea dew.  It was going to be another fine day.  We decided to explore the town today and set off first to do that thing that has become a bit of a ritual and go and visit the local market.   And it was a very good one indeed, just the place to get our market envy fix.  The meat hall was full of interesting produce alongside the usual including big portions of wild boar, whole rabbits and bits of chickens that it certainly wouldn’t occur to us to eat. These included heads and feet, and like most people from England I always thought that the chicken leg stopped just below that meaty piece of thigh meat.  Shoppers would have a fit in England but the French seem to have an appetite for the most unusual. 

In the fish market, once again as with everywhere else we have been the variety and quantity was eye-popping, there were slabs and slabs of oysters all carefully graded by size from number one to number six and the breathtaking amount of shellfish and crustaceans simply served to confirm that the French will eat anything that swims, crawls or slithers through the sea.  Outside the vegetable stalls offered appetizing produce that was all arranged in spectacular displays with much more attention to detail and presentation than we had seen elsewhere. 

We enjoyed walking around the medieval streets with their timber framed houses and we visited the Cathedral de Saint Louis, which was impressive for a provincial city and later the Notre Dam Church that was dark and eerie and with an overwhelming smell of incense. 

Out of the town we sat in a green park and ate strawberries that we had purchased in the market and were startled by the most amazingly loud croaking noise, so loud we took it to be a man with one of those duck decoy whistles but when we investigated further we located the noise from the river and were surprised to find some frogs swimming about and making a really astonishing amount of noise for such small creatures.  Obviously not very bright either because given the French habit of eating practically anything and being especially fond of these little amphibian’s succulent legs you’d have thought that they might have learned over the years not to draw so much attention to themselves. 

As we relaxed over lunch we were amused by a motorist who was looking for a parking place and identified a vacant spot opposite the brasserie.  Actually it was quite obvious that there was insufficient space to squeeze his vehicle into but he was determined to get in there one way or another.  One way was to reverse into the vehicle behind and shunt it a few inches backwards and the other was to drive into the vehicle in front and shunt that one a few inches forward.  He repeated this a few times until he was satisfied with his unorthodox parking arrangements and then he unashamedly got out of his car and sat down at a table for lunch. 

This reminded me of an old friend, Charles who lived in Evreux in Normandy and prided himself on being able to slip into the most improbable parking spaces always claiming that that is exactly what bumpers on cars are designed for.  He also had a curiously impatient habit of when waiting at traffic lights and being first in the queue of driving beyond them a distance of about two metres or so.  I asked him why he did this and he explained that it was so he could make a quick getaway.  What was illogical about this however was that he couldn’t actually see the lights change colour and invariably had to wait to be prompted to move off by the driver in the vehicle behind.  Curious people the French!

 

A Life in a Year – 17th April, The French Language

The French are proud of their language of course and their reluctance to communicate in or even simply acknowledge English gives me the opportunity to demonstrate my fluency in everyday essentials and I had to use all of that knowledge here:

‘Vin blanc sil vous plait’

‘Vin rouge sil vous plait’

‘bier grande sil vous plait’

‘bier grande vite’.  And so on.

Now the French don’t especially like making things easy for visitors and sometimes I get the distinct impression that they would rather not have us in their country at all and a restaurant in La Rochelle on 17^th April 2007 was no exception as it was clear that they could barely tolerate us. 

The menu was exclusively in French which made meal selection a little challenging but we were not put off by this because we have tackled menus in Latvian, Croatian and Polish and by comparison this was a piece of cake.  I attempted some multilingual conversation with the waiter but he was clearly not impressed and I gave up therefore when he announced with the hint of a sneer that passed for an apology that there were no mussels left tonight. 

We ordered an alternative and then we had an incident over condiments.  He didn’t provide us with any and forced us to request them in what little french we knew while he kept up a bulwark against international relations while steadfastly refusing to understand us.  We got passed salt and pepper but got stuck on vinegar.  He totally refused to comprehend and brought us a selection of various sauce accompaniments but never any vinegar.

I am convinced he knew exactly what we wanted but was enjoying taking the piss.  We finished our meal and left and I made a point of collecting up every last cent of change and didn’t leave him a tip and we agreed that we wouldn’t be dining there again this week.

One way around this problem is to rehearse in advance what you want to say.  On another visit to France, this time to Boulogne in 2009 we needed some postage stamps so I rehearsed over and again ‘quatre poste sil vous plait’ and by the time we found a shop was practically word perfect.  The problem with this of course is that having impressed with the opening sentence then the shop assistant replies immediately in impenetrable French and the only two options are to nod vigorously and hope you are making the appropriate response or just stand there flapping and looking a complete twat!  I did a combination of the two and it must have worked because I got the stamps and they were the correct ones for postcards to England.