Talk to the Snail Page 14

  Do the Write Thing

  Letter-writing in French is another of those skills that makes you feel as though you’ve been transported back in time to the court of Louis XIV. Instead of neat sign-offs like ‘Yours faithfully’, the French use endings that can take as long to write as the letter itself.

  The opening to a formal letter can be very simple – you write just ‘Monsieur’ to a man and ‘Madame’ to a woman, or ‘Madame, Monsieur’, if you’re not sure who’ll be reading it – but your farewell takes for ever. Even if you have met the recipient and named them at the beginning of the letter, you have to sign off with something like ‘Veuillez agréer, Madame, l’expression de mes salutations distinguées’ – ‘Please allow me to express my distinguished salutations’ – or ‘Je vous prie de croire, Madame, Monsieur, à l’assurance de mes sentiments respectueux’ – ‘I ask you to believe in the guarantee of my respectful sentiments.’

  You can almost see the writer bowing and scraping as they thank the recipient of the letter for deigning to give attention to their worthless cause. Presumably this is a hang-up from having to write to implacable administrative offices begging for your case to be heard, because the subliminal message seems to be that even if the recipient ignores your request or continues to screw up your life, they are still sure of your distinguished sentiments of guaranteed respect.

  Thankfully, things are getting very slightly less formal, so if you’ve had a few dealings with someone – say an estate agent with whom you’re sorting out a house purchase – you can end a letter ‘Bien à vous’ or, even less formally, ‘Cordialement’.

  In any case, these days, I’m pretty sure that no one actually reads those long formal endings any more. If you get really fed up with someone in an official position, you’re probably safe writing ‘Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, l’expression de mes détestations irrespectueuses.’ Probably.

  What’s in a Nom?

  The French claim to have killed off their aristos, but it’s just not true. The society mags are still full of pictures of unnaturally tanned people called the Baron de this and the Comtesse de that, all of whom will expect to be grovelled to.

  The de prefix before a surname, suggesting a link to the nobility, still counts for a lot. Just look at the life of ex-president Giscard d’Estaing. His father, Edmond Giscard, a civil servant, bought the right to use the noble d’Estaing title in 1922, after claiming to be related to an admiral of the same name. More than eighty years later, as if to prove to the snobs that he was truly classe, Giscard himself bought the fifteenth-century Château d’Estaing in the Aveyron from the religious order that had been living there. He announced that he was going to use it in part as a family archive. No one could now claim that his family were not true d’Estaings. His life’s work, the justification of a noble name, was complete. And they say the Brits are class-obsessed.

  Don’t be fooled by a double-barrelled name, though. In France, they’re rarely chic unless they have at least three barrels. Two-part surnames are usually just a symptom of present-day political correctness, with married women keeping their own surname and tacking their husband’s on the end. Coupled with the French love of double-barrelled first names, this can produce ridiculously long email addresses. In my old company, where emails were all on the model firstname.secondname@company and there were lots of feminist women, the firm’s email list was peppered with addresses like mariebernadette. villepin-dechirac@multiword-company-name. fr. By the time you’d written half the address, you’d give up and phone instead.

  Merde is Everywhere

  When they’re not being excessively polite, the French can be astonishingly obscene.

  It can take a while to get used to the way that French swearwords crop up everywhere in the media, at all times of day, as if they weren’t rude at all. Like women’s breasts, swearwords are considered to be perfectly natural parts of human life.

  I recently heard a French ‘comedian’ (I use quote marks because the term is often rather approximate) do a sketch on a mainstream breakfast-time radio show about how a politician had been looking more cheerful recently. Not because of an economic upturn or improved opinion-poll ratings, but because he had found a new girlfriend and enjoyed a coup de bite, a bit like saying he’d ‘got his dick wet’. The image of a politician’s private parts is not something I want to laugh at or even think about at any time of day, let alone over breakfast. (Now you see why I used the quote marks.) But on this show, his genitals were brandished about with complete disregard for decency and broadcasting standards.

  The word merde hardly causes a stir anywhere, and when doing interviews about my books on French TV and radio, I’ve only ever met one person who didn’t want to say it. This was a radio interviewer whose show was also broadcast in Africa, and who was obliged, she said, to use ‘correct’ diplomatic language. ‘It’s OK for you to say it, though,’ she told me, and I did.

  Despite this non-shockability, French is still a great language to swear in. Not only because the words can be so descriptive (see the small selection below), but also because they seem to be chosen out of sheer relish for the sound they make. Rather than being spat out quickly like English swearwords, they can almost be sung, so an exchange of insults can turn into a kind of operetta.

  Con (‘bloody idiot’, ‘twat’ or ‘moron’) has its regular feminine form, conne, but this can be made even more insulting by adding the ‘asse’ sound, which the French find deliciously vulgar. Connasse (female idiot), and the even more pleasing pétasse (approximately: female farting idiot) are big favourites.

  Other insults that can be elongated in the mouth and therefore enjoyed to the full include a male adaptation of con – connard, which allows the French person to prolong the vulgar-sounding growl at the end of the word – ‘konn-AAAAARRR’.

  Then there is ‘enculé’ (often pronounced ‘on-koo-LAAAAY’), a word that suggests you are an idiot because you have allowed yourself at some point in your life to be sodomized. Not everyone would take that as an insult, of course.

  Porn to be Wild

  The French are as open about porn as they are about using pornographic words. One of the five main terrestrial TV channels, Canal +, offers its subscribers hardcore porn after midnight. And the channel has only just introduced a parental key-in code and a completely blank screen before you key it in – until very recently, the porn was simply scrambled, which did little to hide what was going on during certain close-ups. Or so I’m told, anyway.

  This porn is produced by French film-makers (although the actresses are often imports from the East, where girls will apparently do a lot more for less money), so the channel presumably gets grants from the government for showing home-grown culture rather than Anglo-Saxon sex. Before the film, the channel shows a ‘news’ programme in which they review new movies and show a ‘making of’, which is exactly like a porn film except that there is a man with a video camera in shot, and you see the girls wipe themselves with facial tissues at the end of a scene. Or so I’m told.

  Softer porn, meanwhile, is everywhere. It is perfectly acceptable for a prime-time family film to show bare breasts, buttocks and people bouncing on beds. Janet Jackson’s nipple would not have caused a ripple in France. Sophie Marceau did the same thing at the Cannes Film Festival, and no one in France suggested banning live TV broadcasts. Besides, the French see much more overt stuff on advertising billboards and news-stands. French porn magazines regularly do poster campaigns, so that a newsagent’s window looks like an advertising campaign for sex. A pouting woman, who clearly can’t wait to pull the photographer’s trousers off with her teeth, points her breasts at passers-by of all ages, her splayed crotch hidden only by a headline like ‘I Want More Sex’. Not that I’ve looked that closely myself.

  Anyway, all this flesh and sexuality is on open display, to be admired by schoolkids as they pop in to buy their comics. Whether it’s a healthy thing I don’t know, but it’s there, literally in your face, the whole tim
e.

  33 Salut is a wonderful word, because it can also be used to say goodbye. Though care should be taken when pronouncing it (‘saloo’) so as not to confuse it with salaud (‘salo’), meaning bastard.

  34 If the two people about to kiss are wearing glasses, it is polite for the man to take his off, to avoid an embarrassing clash of frames.

  35 That sounds unfortunate. By ‘rub cheeks with male members’, I mean kiss the male relatives of your French girlfriend, of course, and not their genitals. Even in France that would be excessive.

  36 For more on interminable French meetings, see the Second Commandment.

  A List of Useful French Insults

  (To see how to get the best out of saying con, you might

  like to read the short section on French pronunciation

  in the Fifth Commandment.)

  Con (‘ko’ – with closed ‘on’ sound). Bloody (male) idiot, moron, twat, dickhead, etc. General insult aimed at a man.

  Don’t jump to hasty conclusions if you are called a con – it can be a term of affection. If you make a good joke or do something wacky, the French might say ‘t’es con’, meaning you’re daft, but in a good way. And in the south of France, conversations are peppered with con or putain con (literally, ‘whore bloody idiot’), which aren’t insulting at all – they’re just embellishments, like ‘d’you know what I mean’.

  Conne (‘kon’). Bloody (female) idiot, cow, etc. General insult aimed at woman. Note: conne is never used affectionately.

  You can escalate con and conne by adding gros (pronounced ‘grow’) for a man, or grosse (pronounced ‘gross’) for a woman – meaning fat. France is still a fattist country.

  Salaud (‘sa-lo’). Bastard.

  Salopard (‘sa-lo-PAAARR’). A more fun way of saying bastard.

  Salope (‘sa-lop’). Bitch, female bastard.

  To make these even more fun to say, the French sometimes string them out by saying ‘espèce de salopard’ or ‘espèce de salope’ (pronounced ‘es-pess da . . .’). Literally this means ‘sort of bastard/bitch’. It is up to the recipient of the insult to decide which sort they are and take offence accordingly.

  Enfoiré (‘o-fwa-ray’). Stupid bastard, dickhead (literally, an old word meaning covered in merde).

  Tête de noeud (‘tet danner’). Dickhead (an exact literal translation).

  Tête de con (‘tet dako’). Dickhead (literally, head that looks like female genitalia).

  Va te faire enculer (‘vat affair ong-koolay’). Fuck off, bugger off (literally, go and get yourself sodomized).

  Va te faire voir (‘vat affair vwar’). Get lost, fuck off (literally, go and get a seeing to). The French sometimes, and usually when joking, add ‘chez les Grecs’ – by the Greeks – presumably a politically incorrect reference to that nation’s alleged sexual habits in ancient times.

  A List of possible retorts to the

  above insults

  Ta gueule (‘tag-eul’ or, more effectively, ‘tag-EEEUUUL’ – rhymes with ‘girl’). Shut your gob.

  Ta gueule, connard (‘tag-eul konAAARRR’). Shut your gob, you dickhead.

  Elle t’emmerde, ma gueule (‘el tom-mayor-d, mag eul’).

  Literally, My mouth shits on you. Retort to ‘ta gueule’.

  Casse-toi (‘kass-twa’). Get out of here.

  Dégage (‘day-gaj’). Get out of here.

  Pour qui il se prend, celui-là? (‘porky eel s’pro s’lwee la’) or, if it’s a woman, Pour qui elle se prend, celle-là? (‘porky el s’pro sell-lah’). Who does he/she think he/she is? Retort to Casse-toi or Dégage.

  Finally, if you’re fed up with the exchange of insults, it’s best to turn away, sighing philosophically, and say: Tu me fais chier (‘toom fay shee-ay’). You’re boring me to death here (literally, you are making me shit).

  As boredom – ennui – is the worst possible state to be in according to the French existentialist philosophers, this implies that you are setting yourself above this lowly exchange of insults. Even if what has really happened is that you’ve used up all your obscene vocabulary.

  Some not-too-polite words

  for English speakers

  Rosbif (‘roz-beef’). English person (literally, roast beef. This is often used affectionately.)

  Angliche (‘ong-leesh’). English person (humorous French pronunciation of ‘English’. Can also be used affectionately.)

  Ricain (‘ree-ka’). American (abbreviation of ‘Américain’).

  Amerloque (‘ammer-lock’). American (a condescending version of ‘Américain’).

  Since the Iraq War and the coining of the word ‘globalization’, slang words for Americans have been used much less affectionately in some sections of French society. But see page 257 for the real French attitude to Americans.

  French men are incorrigible romantics: ‘My darling, missing you

  terribly, wish you were here at the conference, your loving husband.’

  THE

  11TH

  COMMANDMENT

  Tu Diras ‘Je T’aime’

  THOU SHALT SAY ‘I LOVE YOU’

  THOU SHALT SAY ‘I LOVE YOU’

  FALLING IN LOVE WITH A FRENCH PERSON IS FRAUGHT WITH danger. I didn’t realize this until it was too late and I was dumped for not saying ‘je t’aime’ often enough.

  The French say it a lot. It pops out as often as a smoker’s cigarette packet. It’s as if they suddenly think, oh, I’ve got nothing to do, I know, I’ll say ‘je t’aime’. This is undeniably very pleasant when you’re on the receiving end. You bring someone a cup of coffee and they say ‘je t’aime’. You think, wow, what would have happened if I’d brought a biscuit as well?

  But after a while it can be counterproductive. They’ve said it so often, and at such incongruous times, that you start to think, OK, I heard you the first time. Or worse, who are they trying to convince? Which is a terrible thing to think when someone is saying the magic Aword. But you can’t economize with your own outbursts of ‘je t’aime’. If you try to save them for special occasions, you’re done for. As I learnt when I was dumped.

  ‘You’re not romantic enough,’ she told me. ‘You never say you love me.’

  ‘I do,’ I protested. ‘I just say it less often than you. Like, less than once an hour.’

  ‘You never send me flowers or call to say you’ve arranged a romantic evening and that the taxi’s waiting outside.’

  This had me stumped. For one thing, the only cut flowers I like are really big, blousy ones like tulips and sunflowers, which my amoureuse (or ex-amoureuse) found vulgar. And the whole ‘taxi’s outside’ thing was a throwback to her ex. He used to do that now and again and she loved it. I did arrange romantic evenings, but too often, it seemed, I actually consulted her on where she’d like to go. Democracy and equality, I thought. Cold English indifference, she decided.

  ‘My ex was so romantic,’ she said, the warm glow of blind nostalgia in her eyes.

  ‘The one who was always cheating on you? The one who dumped you the day before your birthday? For a girl with a rich dad?’ Oh, yes, he was romantic all right.

  But it was no use objecting. She could only remember his non-stop bouquets and the veritable hurricane of je t’aimes that he’d whispered her way.

  The thing is, like so much in French culture, love is about style rather than substance. There are florists all over the place in French towns, and French husbands rarely fail to pick up a few roses on their way home to their wives after a quick bout of adultery. And as his wife is putting the blooms in a vase, the husband will be texting his mistress to tell her he can still feel her luscious nipples pressed against his lips. Oh yes, French men are romantic all right.

  Getting it on the French way

  So what is the best way to succeed in the game de l’amour?

  To answer this, it is vital to understand French mating rituals.

  As in all countries where the two sexes are allowed to go to school together, French mating usu
ally begins amongst classmates. There are almost no single-sex secondary schools, so French lycées are just as much like dating agencies or hormonal experimentation labs as the American high schools we’ve all seen in teen movies. What’s more, the lycée is for fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds only, so there are no pre-pubescent children to giggle when more mature students feel like exchanging saliva in the corridor.

  In one way, lycées are more healthily sexual than British schools, because no French schoolkid has to wear a uniform. This means that the French don’t go in for gymslip fantasies. To a Frenchman, a girl in school uniform just looks like an air hostess for a low-cost 37 Romanian airline.

  University can be a slightly tougher time for French kids to get together, because almost none of them leave the parental home to go and study in another town, so they don’t experience the fun of having a room out of earshot of their parents. And, unlike Americans, few French students have cars to use as mobile bedrooms. The only consolation is that French universities are on strike so frequently that students will often be free to frolic during the daytime when their parents are at work.

  Some Brits think that the lack of pubs in France must make it more difficult for people to meet each other, but there is really no need to worry on their account. There are plenty of clubs, bars and parties, and internet dating is the one thing about the web that the French have mastered. What’s more, unlike in politically correct, hung-up America, men and women actually look at each other in the street, and let each other know that they’re interested in what they’re seeing. If eye contact and a smile are exchanged, French men are very adept at accosting a woman to tell her that she is beautiful and would be making the biggest mistake of her life if she didn’t agree to come for a drink at the nearest café.