How to be French Part I
INTRO
Janine: Bonjour and welcome to The Good Life France Podcast. I’m Janine Marsh, I’m a writer and editor of The Good Life France Magazine and website. In this podcast I’ll be telling you everything you want to know about France and more alongside my podcast partner Olivier Jauffrit.
Oli: Hello, bienvenue. I’m Oli. I’m a Frenchman in London. Near London. Happy new year to you. Yes I am still allowed to say it because in France we can wish people a “bonne année” until the end of January. So that works. I am very excited about this episode Janine. Please tell us what it is about.
Janine: Today we’ll be discussing How to be French!
HOW TO BE FRENCH?
Janine: Many people will say well you’re French if you’re born French – but is it really as simple as that? And what makes French people uniquely French? I can tell you that coming from London as I do, and now having lived in France for many years, I know that there are certain things that French people do that make them stand out as French – such as dunking a buttery, flaky croissant in a bowl or cup of coffee! I mean Olivier – what’s that all about then?
Oli: Well. The best to me is to do that with hot chocolate. Imagine… a fresh and crusty baguette, still a bit warm from the boulangerie, covered with salted butter from Guerande (west of France), dipped into a velvety hot chocolate. This is paradise on earth. There’s nothing better to start your day with. And that’s basically what I had as breakfast every day when I was a kid.
Janine: I’ve thought long and hard about how to be French – I’m even writing a book about it! And for me, I don’t think it is that you can just say being born in France is the only way to be French - I know French people who outside of France – like Oli – whose children may have been born outside of France, but still, they are “French” in the sense that they seem French, do French things…
Oli: When you are French once, you stay French forever ;-)
Janine: Cheese being is served BEFORE dessert. Yes – in France the cheese course doesn’t come last… you eat your Camembert and Brie before your crème brulee.
Oli: Hang on Janine. You’re saying that some people in this world are eating cheese after dessert???
Janine: And my French girlfriend Isabel who is really into nutrition tells me that you should never have coffee with the dessert course – it makes the cheese solidify she says – not a nice thought! Oli do you ever have coffee with cheese?
Oli: nope, only wine… as I don’t drink coffee at all. But I am probably not a good example.
Janine: And here’s a fascinating cheese fact, General de Gaulle once famously said “How can you rule a nation that has 245 cheeses?”. Well he underestimated the problem – there are way more than 245 cheeses, no one actually knows the real number, but conservative estimates put the number at more than 1300 cheeses.
Oli: trying not to chauvinist here but it’s double what you have in the UK… but it’s not a competition… but still.. it's double… ;-)
Janine: Ok one more food fact – there is a myth that “all French women are slim” – in fact there are books written about it. Well let me enlighten you – all French women are NOT slim! They’re normal! French women are real not fantasy figures able to hold off weight in a magical way. But… and it’s a big but (excuse the pun). But statistically, French women tend to be more slim than women in say the UK or the US.
Much has been written on the topic. Books, magazine articles, blogs and recipes galore. But in the end I think that it boils down to a few key things.
Willpower, choice and lessons learned early in life. It takes willpower to walk away from the boulangerie and the patisserie, to say no to all those gorgeous cakes. It takes immense effort to eat just a little bit of cheese when there’s so much to choose from. And the wine. and the gastronomy which is so good it has UNESCO listed status. But it’s more than just willpower. It’s also about habits that back up the willpower from a young age. The French aren’t massive snackers
Oli: you don’t really have time to snack when you do 3-hour lunches…
Janine: Haha, you’re so right, who needs to snack after a good lunch!
And, French kids are not encouraged to snack between meals. The only exception is after school/before dinner. Having lunch at noon, dinner is generally around 7 pm to 8 pm or later. It’s a long time for kids to go without food so a small snack is given at around 4.30 pm.
Known as goûter, which literally means to taste, it’s an institution in France. And it’s almost exclusively a sweet treat. Cake, biscuits, a piece of baguette wrapped around a chunk of chocolate. Or slathered in nutella.
Oli: dipped into hot chocolate again… sometimes. Because YES we do dip Nutella on baguette into hot chocolate. I mean, why not?
Janine: Chocolate and chocolate… hmmm!
Some kids grow out of the snack phase when they become adults. Some don’t. That’s where the willpower comes in.
Oli: oops… I didn’t
Janine: And of course, some French people snack or else there wouldn’t be rows and rows of sweets and biscuits at the supermarket. But I’m astonished by how many of my French friends simply don’t snack.
Hmmm but does not snacking, eating cheese before dessert and dunking your croissant in your coffee make you French?
Non – it does not.
Oli: there’s more to it…
Janine: Oh la la. It’s such a French expression. In English we often say “oh la la” in a tone of ooher… but in France when you say oh la la it’s generally meant to indicate something you’re not happy with – and the unhappier you are, the more la las. I’ve heard French people say oh la la la la, or even oh la la la la la la la. Maybe more, but you get the picture… Perhaps when you go to get your train to Paris at the train station and arrive to be told that there is a strike… which leads to another very French thing – the right to strike… how would you say Oh la la the Oli?
Oli: Oh la la!
Janine: Oh la la la la!
Oli: Oh yes. Striking and protesting is a national sport in France. That’s how unions negotiate with the government. All the time. There is the normal way: discussing and then, if there is a disagreement: arguing and protesting. And there is the French way: protesting, arguing (being on strikes) and then discussing. Some people say that this behaviour started during the French revolution in 1789 and never stopped since…
Janine: And talking of the French Revolution let’s get on to topics of scarves, maybe it dates back to when people lost their heads and tied a scarf? No not really, I’m kidding. But when I first came to France it was very clear to me that French people are obsessed with and addicted to scarves. Both men and women wear scarves at every opportunity. An American friend told me that she has learned 57 ways to tie a scarf in an attempt to be more French before she goes for her citizenship test to become resident. I told her I’m pretty sure they won’t ask you tie a scarf! I once asked my mayor why he was wearing a scarf on a summer’s day and he said (in a French accent) “one – it looks good” and “two it makes sure I don’t get a frog in my throat, I don’t catch a cold, I have to make a speech later today and the scarf protects my throat”.
Oli: a frog in the throat? That’s weird. It’s usually a cat in the throat for me.
Janine: Ah yes, I was translating! But it’s true in English we get a frog in our throat and French get a big furry cat. I’m not sure which is worse. I don’t think I want a frog or a cat in my throat which is why I now wear a scarf the minute the air turns a bit chilly!
Ok now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty of Frenchness – talking. French people
LOVE to talk. If there is a way to say something using one hundred words instead of ten, you can be absolutely sure they will go for it. Every single event I have ever been to in France has started late because, given an opportunity to make a speech, a French man or woman simply cannot pass up the chance to make a speech. A French audience accepts this as normal, foreigners are completely bemused by it. Whether it is the opening of a road, a restaurant or a play – everything that can possible be started with a long drawn out dialogue is considered an opportunity to use the skills of language, a highly prized talent in France. Sometimes debates sound like arguments, full on, abusive, yelling at each other rows. Monsieur and Madame J – I’m not going to tell you their names in case anyone listening knows them - who live across the road from me often scream at each other, trading insults and accusations that anyone who walks by, or lives opposite them like me, can hear. Their debates go on for a long time sometimes.
Jean-Claude tells me that being able to debate in public in this way is seen as a sign of a healthy relationship, your partnership is close enough that you can talk to each other this way and still be friends, lovers, married even, after it’s over. He has a point perhaps.
When we go to our local bar – there is always a lot of debating going on. It ranges from the gossipy type, perhaps about how much everyone hates Monique the barmaid’s yappy little dog to what President Macron is getting up to in Paris, or just down the road from where we live in the seaside town of Le Touquet where he has a holiday home. Discussions about the goings on at the Elysées Palace are spoken of as if everyone in the bar is on first name terms with the President and his nearest and dearest. If you didn’t know better, you’d think old Monsieur Dubarre - who we all know has never been further than Picardy, spent the week in Paris as an invisible spy because he has an opinion on everything from what Madame Macron had for breakfast (he reckons she has two egg whites and a slice of melon, abstains from lunch, and has vegetables and meat for dinner – yes she does have will power in that case) to whether President Macron should have met with this world leader or that and what he should have said or done.
Being able to talk for hours on end is considered a very good thing in France. At school French kids learn to debate as a matter of course. A wildly popular French TV documentary in 2016 called A Haute Voix (Aloud) pulled in the punters with its preview promotion which read: “Speaking well is the key to social advancement and what is better than a beautiful and long speech? Nothing. Is not a beautiful and long speech to be heard, understood and acclaimed? It is an ancient art that has a name: eloquence…”. The programmed followed teenagers who took part in verbal contests to prove their oral worth by “arguing, whispering, arguing more, laughing, haranguing and arguing again”.
Blimey. When I was at school, we had clubs where we learned to disco dance or make paper flowers.
Oli: Wow, that was a long talk Janine. On this topic, you’re definitely becoming French!…
Janine: Well you know, I’m trying! There’s even a TV show in France called Le Grand Oral which definitely isn’t as exciting as it might sound to some. Basically 12 amateur speakers compete against each other to give the best speech before a Jury, not the sort of talent show most of us are used to. It’s very earnest and there’s not a lot of laughing. French audiences lap it up, the more passionate, dramatic and eloquent the speaker, the more everyone French seems utterly mesmerised. One of the speeches gained more than 10 million views on social media networks. The old saying that “sometimes not speaking says more than all the words in the world” doesn’t apply in France.
OLI: That is really true Janine. You know France very well…
Janine: Well I’m sorry to say, we’ve run out of time in this episode for How to be French and we’ll do a Part 2 because I’m pretty sure you also want to here about the very French habit of saying tac tac tac, of only wearing skin tight swimming trunks in public pools (if you’re a man), about how French people have many strange superstitions – like carrying a cat across a stream brings bad luck – and I think that they may take this seriously as I have never seen a French person carry a cat across a stream so it is clearly something that is being avoided at all costs. And there’s a whole heap more to being French... but now it’s time for the question and Answer section…
Q&A SECTION
Oli: Ok, since we’re teaching people how to be French, let’s speak French: quelle est la question du jour Janine?
Janine: le question aujourd’hui est de David Knotts de les Etats Unis…. Right, that’s enough of that! Today’s question is from Pastor David Knotts, a retired Methodist minister from Pennsylvania USA and he asks: Do French men still wear the beret?
The answer is yes! Not just French men, women also wear them – but not as much as they used to…
So first, a bit about the beret. It’s an iconic symbol of France – it’s part of the heritage and savoir-faire, the knowhow of France.
The beret was born in the Pyrenees in the far south of France, from the Gascon word ‘berret’. Berets have been worn for hundreds of years in France and it was once a thriving industry. But a few years ago, due to cheaper Chinese productions the beret industry was on the cusp of extinction. There’s one company left making them, Laulhêre began in 1840 and still make them the tradition way. It takes two full days to make a traditional, authentic beret, sometimes longer, each item being a unique piece with its own adjustments and checks. Traditionally using pure Merino virgin wool, the dying process requires a mixture of various pigments. It takes enormous care to make sure the dye ‘takes’ evenly across the whole of the wool. Every beret is checked over and over to make sure the colour is perfectly deep and bright, making it a unique and noble product. Many fashion designers work with the company and use the beret in their marketing and catwalk shows from Dior to Chanel – it’s worn by artists, musicians, free spirits – Edith Piaf, Brigitte Bardot, Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Beyonce… berets never go out of fashion.
Oli: I agree it is for everybody. Last year, my mum knitted a very nice blue beret for my daughter.
Janine: ooh lovely! But back to that question do Frenchmen wear berets still? They sure do! Berets are worn everywhere in France, my Bread Man, the man who delivers my bread, not made of bread, wears one. My neighbour Jean-Claude wears one in the garden – he says they keep his ears warm on a cold day but they are not worn by everyone ok!
If you have any questions you’d like us to answer pop on onto the website thegoodlifefrance.com and you’ll see a contact us form – just fill it in and send it to me and we’ll do our best to help!
WHAT'S NEXT?
Janine: In the next episode we’ll be joined by Karina Water from Australia. She and her husband lived in Perth Australia when they saw a photo of a ruined castle in the midi pyrenees, southern France, on the internet and fell head over heels for it. They flew many hours to France, drove a further umpteen hour, pushed open the rusty, squeaking old gates to the castle and fell head over heels in love with the Chateau de Gudanes. Since then they have been restoring this sleeping beauty of a castle back to life, wining a legion of fans who follow the progress and the ups and downs of castle life…
Tune in, sign up to the podcast, share it and enjoy our free magazine and all the thousands of great articles on thegoodlifefrance.com website – the magazine line is there too.
Oli: what an achievement! Looking forward to hearing all about it in our next episode.
Janine: It’s au revoir from me
Oli: And goodbye from me
Janine: speak to you soon.
