A Cultural Difference Survey

Some months ago, I sent a rather enigmatic email to a number of my American friends. My partner sent a French version of the mail to his French friends. The query read as follows: "Would you please take a moment to make a list of 15 animals, without asking for any explanations at this point and without thinking about your responses. Just make a quick list of the first 15 animals that pop into your mind." We added that an explanation would be sent as soon as all responses had been evaluated.

Whereas Americans responses were immediate, I'm still waiting for responses from the French end of the survey. My guess is that they'll never show up, so I've decided to finally divulge what our little cultural difference survery was all about.

We wanted to see if there would be a difference between what Americans put on a list of the first 15 animals that came to mind and what French people would put on such a list.

Our curiosity was prompted by an agument -- a heated one -- that took place around a dinner table last summer. I was the only foreigner; all the others were French. We had just visited an excellent local aquarium with my partner's small children, so the conversation naturally led to fish and animals. I mentioned that when we talked about animals, we weren't necesarily talking about fish as well, that we could be talking exclusively about mammals. That's not quite how I worded things, but you get the gist.

Apparently it was a huge gaff. I was immediately attacked, no questions asked as to the why of my statement. It was a hot moment -- hot, hot, CHAUD, and not because of the summer temperatures. I had a moment's reflection, then decided not to take the French reaction seriously. After all, they were probably just teasing. On what grounds could they be expressing any real criticism? Sometimes when we say "animals," we mean "mammals." Who doesn't know that? They had consumed too many pastis, too much rosé, or the heat was getting to them. I didn't see anything to get all steamed up over, nor did I feel like explaining myself. If they wanted to be that bornés (obtuse), it was OK by me. The stars were shining, the food was good, the wine chilled. I let it drop.

Erreur! The gauntlet was again thrown down the next day. Someone who had been at dinner told me that I must be absolutely stupid to think that "animal" did not always refer to "fish" as well. The French are big fans of superlatives. Curiously they are also big users of the word peut-être (perhaps).

I couldn't believe the accusation. I replied that in the United States, we sometimes used the term "animal" to refer solely to mammals. I called one of my daughters to ask her what she thought. In short, she had the same reaction as I: "animal" refers to mammals in some settings, to the animal kingdom in others. My Frenchies were not ruffled. They concluded, and not without some very real concern, that we must be victims of a serious family deficit. And they weren't joking. They chalked it up to our Mormon background. Or to the American educational system in general, assuming that American science and textbooks must be "different" due to our puritanical origins.

What???????!

How could these people draw such conclusions? They were intelligent, thinking, educated. I was aghast and spitting mad. Firstly, they knew me and knew that I wasn't an idiot, so why weren't they open to a more reasonable explanation to this "animal" question? Secondly, why would they think that a large portion of the western world would have a completely different scientific and educational take on what "animals" were?

It was obvious to me that there was a linguistic-cultural difference at the heart of the issue. And it turns out that I was right.

I got out two dictionaries: one exclusively French, published in France, one exclusively English, published in the United States. Ah, hah! The stupid American (aka me) read to the closed-minded French that the term "animal" is used in American English to refer to the kingdom of living organisms including fish but not plants AND that it is also used to refer broadly to mammals alone. The French dictionary doesn't show any such difference.

Be that as it may...

My French tablemates insisted that any French person -- that is, all French people everywhere, including little kids -- would automatically include fish on a list of 15 animals. Not one of their colleagues followed through on the survey, though, whereas, as I've already said but want to point out again, the Americans to whom the survey was sent all responded immediately. Most of them did not include fish on their lists. Out of 20 people to whom I sent the survey (one German-French-American, all the rest American), only 3 put "fish" or the name of a fish on their list. 

I think the same would be true of French lists, despite the French dictionary's definition of "animal." The reason has absolutely nothing to do with scientific definitions, either. At least not in my opinion.

The reason is very simple. It spins around usage. We tend to separate fish-animals and mammal-animals into two separate sets in our everyday conversation. Therefore, what we're thinking of USUALLY when we say "animal" is mammal: cat, dog, bear, otter, giraffe, elephant, cow, zebra, etc. If we want to talk about fish-animals, we say "fish."

This story points to other cultural differences between Americans and French. For instance, in my experiences, the French assume at the get-go that the other person is wrong, especially if the other person is a foreigner, especially if the foreigner is an American, especially if the American is a woman. And this is the house that Jack built.

There's often no entertainment of another perspective. There's seldom any opening to the possibility that the French person may be wrong. This seems to be a European posture in general: your best defense is offense, so attack and don't yield. Like football. Great, I don't get that game either. Football may be an American sport, but try this tactic here and see how far it gets you. A French person is respected for it; a foreigner is criticized, so choose your battles well.

What happens if you persist and don't accept the French person's posture as the one and only one allowed on the field? What happens if you go even further and actually succeed in showing that you are not only correct but that the French person is wrong? You'll probably not get an apology for any insults slung your way during the conversation. In fact, you'll probably not get any acknowledegment of any sort. Instead the topic, now apparently insignificant and unworthy of continued discussion, is changed.

Here's another possible scenario: you recede or concede at the first sign of a confrontation. Americans often do this because arguing with a French person can be a decidedly uphill battle, the source of frustration and even angst. Try one of these tactics and you are often considered as weak, unintelligent, insignificant yourself and therefore not worth talking to. Lose-lose. 

I've seen this happen between French people, too. It's a power game that I find particularly annoying for two reasons: one, I don't see what "power" is at stake and two, I don't like confrontations. Sometimes, though, more often with French women than with French men, you need to play the game and hold your ground, maybe even tread on theirs. Dumb.

Yes, Americans too know that fish are part of the animal kingdom. Our educational system does not teach us otherwise. However our language allows for another spin on the word. Language and culture are inextricably intwined.

Is there a moral here? 

"Walk softly and carry a ...... big dictionary?"

France Reacts to Our President-elect, Barack Obama

To read about France's reaction to our election of Barack Obama, please go to my YourFrenchLife web site. Here's the URL: http://www.yourfrenchlife.synthasite.com/

A new story about village life will be up soon! Promise!

This Old French House

The whole village is gearing up for winter, gleaning vegetables, gathering fruits, winterizing doors and windows, and mostly bragging about not turning the heat on yet. It's a game played all over France: who can go the longest without touching that thermostat? Personally I'd rather be warm. That said, I haven't turned my heat on yet and am typing this wrapped up in two layers of wool sweaters, a down vest, thick wool socks and shearling-lined slippers purchased at a local grocery store for the low price of 9 euros (what you don't spend is also a game here). It's not that it's particularly cold here yet, not outside anyway. Inside these thick walls is a whole other climate...

I don't think that the annual heat/no heat contest is solely connected to the high price of oil, gas, and electricity, at least not in the Cevennes. I think it's deeply embedded in the culture, where suffering is equated, consciously or not, to how good a person you are -- or are not. No suffer, no good, or not good enough. That interpretation may have its roots in a strict Protestantism dating back to the 1500s.

Wikipedia link about Protestantism in the Cevennes: http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Camisard

I've recently moved to a quirky old house built in the early 1800s, with cold air easily making its way in through a Brazilian weak spots (homage to George oblige). The windows are all single-paned glass and there are three fireplaces, all of whose chimneys were wide open to the skies and none of which was functional. But the house is roomy, bursting with charm and the rent is low because the owners don't want to be bothered with fixing things up to charge more. That's just fine by me. Mr. Bricolage, the handyman's dream store, is just 45 minutes away -- and is now one of my favorite places in France.

The house is located smack in the middle of the village, whereas my former home (which I despised) was just on the outskirts. The distance between the two places is no more than a few hundred meters at most. However, I've experienced a distinct change in how the villagers interact with me now versus then. I am now a neighbor; I was then an outsider. I don't get it, but that's how it is.

To come into my new old house, you first open a hefty double wooden door at street level, then walk up a flight of stairs, open another thick wooden door and walk onto the floor where the kitchen and sitting room are located. Cross this space and open another sturdy wooden door to another flight of stairs that lead up to a landing, two bedrooms, and two fireplaces. Open two more heavy doors, with locks and huge keys (that work), go up three steps and you're in the bathroom. This house is not for the incontinent. I think that the bath used to be an outhouse, attached to the main house at some point in the not so distant past. It's been modernized into a more or less (less) conventional bathroom, depending on what your idea of conventional is, but there's no disguising those heavy, keyed doors that once led to somewhere outside the house.

There are two more doors near the bath, one leading back down a tiny staircase that eventually takes you back to my front door, the other leading up a narrow and somewhat frightening stairwell to the terrace on the roof. From there you can see the beautiful mountains surrounding the village, but no one can see you. In this tiny village, where everyone knows and sees everything you do, a private terrace is truly a piece of heaven.

Back to the cave, which, despite its name, is on street level: I always imagine them as below street level, underneath the house. In fact, this street level cave is indeed below the house, just not underground, so I suppose all is well in my world of images. At any rate, take two steps down from the street entrance into the cave and you're in a space that smells exactly like your grandmother's or great-grandmother's coal basement. Everyone who's come by to visit has made that comment. Everyone -- this house is instant nostalgia. Hidden back in a corner (of the cave) is a deep cupboard with some very old, very large bottles containing who knows what inside. I think it's some kind of Cevenol moonshine, stashed away to age at least a century ago -- something to check out one of these chilly winter nights if ever the courage comes to us. Perhaps some things are better left untapped?

The oil tank and controls for the old but central heating system are located in the cave, next to the mysterious bottles. The system seems to work, although it gives off quite a bit of heat even when set for hot water only. There's apparently no repairing that flaw, so we decided to focus on preventing the heat from escaping into the street through the huge gaps in the wood-planking of the door, as well as all around the door. Our hope was to force the heat upwards into the house. 

And so, as of last Sunday, the door is no longer functional. The gaps are all blocked up thanks to high-pressure foam in a can from Mr. Bricolage. The stuff is not easy to manage, but it's cheap and efficient. More importantly, it's fun, like trying to smoosh melted marshmallows into cracks and crevasses. Admittedly, that may not be everyone's idea of fun, but when you live in a teeny, tiny village with a bike as your primary mode of transit, you modify your standards -- actually, they just gradually change all by themselves.

French Grrrrrrrrrrrammmar!

OK, sure it's been months since my last entry. My excuses? Don't need 'em, but raising them gives me a chance to vaunt the arrival of an exquisite new family member, the lovely, chatty, and absolutely perfect Nora. And preparation for a gin rummy fest in Paris with my sister. I haven't played in so long that I had to read up on all the rules to be the worthy opponent one should be if participating in a gin rummy fest. Goes without saying. And a zillion (I counted them) ongoing projects essential to daily life, that keep my mind too occupied for anything creative.

As for the title of this entry: no, the "r" on my keyboard doesn't stick, although given the humidity of the climate around here, I'm expecting keys to start sticking any day now.

The title's tongue-in-cheek angst comes from a recent experience that started out as a calm evening reading Fred Vargas, a French author of very intelligent detective novels. She's been translated into English, so check her out in either language. My partner and I read together most evenings (in French) and a couple of nights ago, we came across a passage in which the very common word gens was treated several times as feminine. We looked at each other, both wondering the same thing: Mais attends là, gens est bien masculin, non? = “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t gens masculine?” Side note: our lives are really less boring than that makes it sound.

We could have, should have let it drop, in the interest of continuing what was a very good story, but instead, our reading came to a screeching halt and out came the dictionary. Neither of us could conjure up a viable explanation for this gender switch on our own, although both of us had some faint recollection of a strange grammar rule governing gens. As far as we could remember, gens was masculine: Les gens du nord, ils ont un accent plus pointu que les gens du sud.

Jean-Paul was as perplexed as I. Neither of us had ever noticed gens in the feminine. We’d surely come across it, but it hadn’t registered with us. Lately these little oddities of the French language spring out to grab us by the throat, ever since we discovered an interesting, not-so-little book by Jacqueline de Romilly, of The Académie française. It traces the evolution of the French language. Yup, winter nights are long here in this village... Some of Romilly’s chapters are very recherchés, but others are truly stimulating – short reads, too, at just two pages each, since they originally appeared as articles in a fairly ordinary French magazine whose readers aren’t particularly interested in intellectual mumbo-jumbo. You can probably find a copy of the book on Amazon, but be forewarned that it’s in French. Here’s the info: Dans le jardin des mots, published in 2007 by De Fallois Editions, prefaced by philosopher and journalist André Giovanni. The preface is great, by the way.

Retournons à nos moutons, “let’s return to our sheep” = let’s get back to the point: the bi-gendered gens. The explanation we found is reason enough to drop to your knees in gratitude for our neutered English. Apparently even the French, including some celebrated authors, make mistakes when it comes to gens.

That gens is both a masculine and feminine noun is not hard to swallow. There are other everyday nouns that take both genders. Change the gender, change the meaning: la manche = the sleeve; le manche = the handle / la poêle = the frying pan; le poêle = the stove / le livre = the book; la livre = the pound. The list goes on, but it’s not especially long and is really just a matter of vocabulary. The story’s more complicated for gens.

Here are the Rules:
Gens is masculine, unless preceded by a plural adjective. In that case it’s feminine, as is the adjective modifying it. Remember that list of BAGS adjectives from French class? The ones used to describe, in general, Beauty, Age, Goodness (or lack of it), and Size: beau, belle, joli, jeune, vieux, vieille, bon, mauvais, grand, petit, etc. Those types of adjectives are generally placed before the noun they modify, whereas most others follow. Example: C’est un vieux monsieur. But: C’est un monsieur respectable.

According to the Rules, when one of those adjectives precedes gens, gens and the preceding adjective take the feminine form: Ce sont de vieilles gens. = “They’re old folks,” using the feminine form of the adjective vieux. But, ce sont des gens français, with “français” in the masculine. If we continue to talk about these old folks, using a pronoun, we need to use elles: Mes voisins sont de vieilles gens, elles sont françaises. Note bene: “voisins” is masculine, “vielles gens” is feminine, “elles” and “françaises” are feminine. Grrrrrrrrrr…

You may want to pour yourself a glass of wine before continuing down the not-so-logical road of this French grammar rule.

Next scenario to consider: gens preceded by two adjectives, the second of which ends – in the masculine and the feminine – in a mute “e.” Re-read that a couple of times. What we’re talking about here are BAGS adjectives like brave, whose masculine and feminine forms both end in a mute “e,” that is, BAGS adjectives whose masculine and feminine forms are identical.

In this seemingly, but only seemingly complicated and limited case, you use the masculine form for the first adjective. Who cares about the gender of the second adjective since you can’t tell if it’s masculine or feminine anyway – the forms are identical. JP and I felt victorious just for having grasped the scenario; understanding the Rule and its application was icing on the cake. Here are two examples to help clarify: Ce sont de vrais braves gens, les étudiants de français ! / Ces prétendus honnêtes gens nous ont trompés. You see, brave and honnête are absolutely the same, whether they be masculine or feminine. The adjectival form that matters is that of the first adjective in the pair modifying gens. And as you see, in these two examples anyway, there’s no difference there either when it comes to pronunciation. The only difference between the masculine and feminine forms of vrais-vraies and prétendus-prétendues lies in their spelling. With BAGS adjectives like “petit-petite,” you hear a difference, so if you make a mistake, everyone in the room knows it -- a (perhaps) gross exaggeration, but let's note anyway that those who bring the error to your attention are not worth talking to. Chances are, you’ll quite naturally use the masculine (correct) form of the first adjective anyway. Here’s why: trying saying, ces petiT(es) braves gens. It doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue. Now try, ces peti(ts) braves gens. It’s easier to articulate and therefore what you would naturally tend towards saying. I'm not a linguist, but that makes sense to me.

That said, on to the next gens Rule: when gens is qualified by the adjective tout, to designate specific people, you use the masculine plural form tous: tous ces gens, tous les gens sensés. On the other hand – there’s almost always an “on the other hand” in French grammar – you use the feminine plural form toutes IF gens and toutes are separated by an adjective whose masculine form differs from the feminine form by the absence of a mute “e” (e.g. bon-bonne): J’aimerais remercier toutes les bonnes gens qui nous ont aidés. Notice that the past participle agrees with gens… in the masculine plural, despite the feminine form of bon. Chorus: Grrrrrrrrrr…

Perhaps you’re beginning to see, though, that the whole thing comes down to a question of pronunciation, that is, to making it easier to pronounce gens in combination with certain adjectives. English does the same kind of irritating stuff, but we don’t notice it because we’re so used to it.

Last gens Rule, finally: what happens if we’re using the adjective jeune? Bring it on, you'll respond, mellowed by that glass of wine I suggested. Ah, but this is an easy one, a hard and fast, easy to grasp rule: use the masculine. Youppie! Example: de joyeux jeunes gens.

Fortunately for non-native speakers of French, the native speakers, who rely more on their ear than on their Bécherelles to guide them, don’t manage to perfection all these rules. Conclusion: non-native speakers are allowed some leeway. Those readers who have spent some time living in France will recognize this seemingly logical conclusion as wishful thinking. And why is that anyway?

One last word, in the form of a quotation I found on a French chat site for writers, a smile-provoking observation left by a professional, native-French translator trying to digest the rules concerning gens: “Cela m'amène à conclure que le mot gens, étant un mot difficile à faire précéder, les règles ont pour but de le faire précéder autant que possible par un adjectif finissant par le son "e". Si ce n'est pas possible au masculin, alors on met l'adjectif au féminin... Sans être une féministe obsédée, je trouve que ça aurait été beaucoup plus simple de décider que le mot gens est féminin! Ah la la ! quels gens!” [“This leads me to conclude that the word gens is a difficult word to modify by an adjective preceding it; the rules’ purpose is to impose, as far as it possible, an adjective ending in a mute “e.” If that’s not possible in the masculine, then you use the feminine form. Not to be obsessive feminist, but it would have been much easier to just make gens feminine! …”].

France is all about aesthetics, baby.