Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Re: [metatuning] politeness

----- Original Message -----
From: "X. J. Scott" <xjscott@...>
To: <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 1:07 AM
Subject: [metatuning] politeness

> on 1/5/03 3:51 AM, monz wrote:
>
> >> Why had I spent 3 years studying French? A lot of good
> >> it did me anyway since if you don't have the accent
> >> right they can't hear you.
> >
> >
> > i get really incensed every time i hear or read an
> > American complain about how the French people are
> > rude if you don't speak fluent French. bullshit.
>
> If you read my sentence you will see I said no such thing.
> I merely stated a fact. If you don't have the accent right they can't hear
> you. On the other hand, French people I met in Mexico DID understand my
> French.
>
> The French are *the* most polite society I have ever encountered.
> Second to no others that I know of. Who is as polite as the French? Can
> anyone name even one culture? I do not think so!

sorry, Jeff ... i guess i was kind of using your statement
as a scapegoat to vent my own anger. what you wrote
is perfectly understandable. but i have heard comments
like that from many Americans who have been to France
and it bugs me.

> > i studied French for 7 years and can speak it quite
> > well when i'm in practice ... but in the years between
> > visits i get very rusty indeed, and during the first
> > day in France on a new trip i have to keep the dictionary
> > in my pocket for ready reference. on every one of these
> > occasions, Parisians i spoke to in the street tried
> > to communicate with me in French when i tried first,
> > but upon realizing that i was having trouble, happily
> > switched to English if they spoke it, even at my insistence
> > that they continue in French.
>
> When I spoke French to French people, they did not understand my French at
> all. But they did recognize that I was attempting to speak French even
> though what I was saying made as much sense to them as listening to a
monkey
> howl. It was obvious that it was actually physically painful to them to
even
> hear me mutilating their language.

ah, OK ... now *that* makes a lot of sense. the French
as a nation truly do love their language, and i can see
how they'd have trouble bearing someone distorting it so.

> With only a few exceptions where the
> person genuinely only knew French, they switched to English in order to
> communicate with me. The French are wonderful people but their food was
> expensive when I was there. I don't doubt you found bargains there last
> year but I assure you I looked far and wide in 1995 and the situation was
> very different. It was not for lack of trying - no matter where I was, I
> scanned menus looking for bargains because I was very hungry. And I
scanned
> a lot of menus since I walked everywhere I went and became intimately
> familiar with the layout of each city I visited.

my best advice on finding food bargains in Paris: scope out
the little restaurants in neighborhoods away from the tourist
areas, and buy stuff you can prepare yourself at local
markets. youth hostels often provide a cooking area.

and even in the tourist areas, the Rue Mouffetard (sp?)
is extremely cheap and has an incredible variety of cuisines
on offer.

-monz

🔗Afmmjr@...

🔗monz <monz@...>

hi Jeff,

> From: "X. J. Scott" <xjscott@...>
> To: <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 11:34 AM
> Subject: Re: [metatuning] politeness
>
> <... snip ...>
>
> What this all means is that Americans who speak
> NO french at all, not even horrid bad french, find
> that no one speaks english. But americans who at
> least attempt to speak their language will find that
> people will try to converse with them in english.
> I think that part of the issue of americans saying
> french are rude is the americans (rudely, to the french)
> have not even attempted to learn basic french and thus
> find no one speaks english and become frustrated.
> But if you speak a tiny bit of bad french, then there
> is not a communication problem.

OK, then we're not arguing anything -- this is exactly
what i was saying.

the reason many Americans who've been to France claim
that the French are rude is because they made no attempt
at all to speak the native language.

here's one of my favorite jokes, and one which a lot
of Europeans understandably find very amusing:

question:
if a trilinguist is a person who speaks 3 languages,
and a bilinguist is a person who speaks 2 languages,
what's a monolinguist?

answer:
an American.

-monz

🔗John Starrett <jstarret@...> <jstarret@...>

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "X. J. Scott" <xjscott@e...> wrote:
> on 1/5/03 3:51 AM, monz wrote:
<snip>The French are wonderful people but their food was
> expensive when I was there. I don't doubt you found bargains there last
> year but I assure you I looked far and wide in 1995 and the situation was
> very different. It was not for lack of trying - no matter where I was, I
> scanned menus looking for bargains because I was very hungry. And I scanned
> a lot of menus since I walked everywhere I went and became intimately
> familiar with the layout of each city I visited.
>
> - Jeff

French restaurant food is indeed expensive, but there are bargains hidden everywhere. I expect you had a streak of bad luck. When I am hungry in France, I just go to the deli for some pate, the bakery for some bread, and the grocer for some tomatoes and wine. Then it's off to the park for a picnic. You are indeed right. thr French are very polite. People who say otherwise are invariably high season tourists off the bus in Paris for six hours, cramming every tourist trap into their schedule, or very rude themselves.

John Starrett