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Three of The Yorker's blogs team have had a hard think about what general rules they live their lives by and written them down in the form of their own Personal Philosophies.
Nowadays, it’s all about cleverly navigating the social arena. And etiquette, though restraining, lulled one into a (false?) sense of security. Handbooks and manuals taught people exactly what how to react to any social stimuli, and when I first arrived in the UK I longed for such a manual.
Indeed, in France, there are also some thorny questions. Should I use the “tu” or the “vous” form: a dilemma easily resolved by using the “vous” form with adults until they ask you otherwise, and the “tu” form with anyone your own age or younger. The number of “bises” (kisses on the cheek) might constitute another dilemma. To greet friends or informal acquaintances, or when you are introduced to someone in an informal context, you do the “bise”. Some awkwardness may initially arise as different regions have different customs—busy Parisians have reduced the kisses down to two, but southerners may be used to three or even four.
In England, however, I find the boundaries strangely fluctuating and puzzling. At times, I go in for a handshake only to receive a hug or conversely go in for two kisses instead of one; appearing generally awkward and often overfriendly.
Luckily I have the ultimate comeback: I’m French, what’s your excuse?
Luckily I have the ultimate comeback: I’m French, what’s your excuse?
I thus usually account for differences in terms of being “continental”. This entitles me to get away with the expression of scandalous opinions and un-PC jokes, even though I may be somewhat at odds with the cliché of the French. To begin with, I hate Camembert and escargot. I am not a frog-eating creature, treading the Earth (or rather an a country comprising of the tourists’ Paris and equally touristy Côte d’Azur) with menacing looks, beret firmly placed atop my head and baguette readily propped under my arm.
My nationality is not something I was ever proud of or particularly aware of before. Yet I find that it somehow defines many of my relationships. I am the French girl studying English lit who learnt English in Holland, who spent the last few years in Paris but whose parents live in Tahiti.
I've lost count of the times I have shaken my head and responded to “you’re French?” or the patronising “You speak really good English” with a semi-modest smile and an “Oh don’t hold it against me” or a humorous “only by birth!” Still I cannot deny it: as much as I may be foreign here, I will be more so at “home” at Christmas, struggling to articulate proper sentences in my mother tongue, feeling insulted and mildly humiliated when shopkeepers nod knowingly and inevitably say they “can tell” I’ve been speaking English all this time.
But when they do, then I can only take it as a compliment. And so, as much as I have adopted England, I hope it has adopted me.
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