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FRANCE EXPLAINED

Decoding the French: They are not rude, it’s just a big misunderstanding

Rudeness is often considered by the rest of the world to be as typically French as smelly cheese, baguettes or drinking red wine every lunchtime. But it shouldn't be, argues Rose Trigg.

Published: 18 March 2019 15:26 CET
Updated: 5 August 2023 15:05 CEST
Decoding the French: They are not rude, it's just a big misunderstanding
A French waiter in a restaurant (Photo by PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP)

The travel site, SkyScanner, surveyed over 1,000 travellers to find the rudest nation. France came in first place with almost 20 percent of respondents ranking France as “rude”.

Indeed a quick search on Google reveals that “Why are the French so rude?” appears to be one of the great unanswered questions of our time.

But what if this is all one big misunderstanding?

Julie Barlow, co-writer of ‘The Bonjour Effect’, believes that’s certainly the case.

“The root of the problem is not that the French are rude, it’s that we don’t understand the codes of French conversation,” she told The Local in a previous interview.

Basically French society has different codes of behaviour and standards of what is considered polite. In day to day interactions with the French, you could be breaking any number of those rules without even knowing it.

The good news is that to get back in the good books of the French doesn’t require years of formal etiquette training, just a few simple guidelines to follow.

One little word

The most simple one starts with ‘B’ and ends in ‘R’, and it was probably the first word you ever learnt in French. The word ‘Bonjour’ is frequently disregarded, or used improperly by foreign visitors to France. Even people who have lived here for years still haven’t caught on to how to use it.

“You can’t have any interaction with the French unless you say bonjour, you say it in a meaningful way, and you give them a chance to say bonjour back,” said Barlow.

By not waiting for a bonjour in return before you ask a question, “you’re not giving them time to acknowledge or give you permission to continue the conversation.”

Given France’s history of revolution and motto of egalité, you can imagine why they may be a little touchy when they feel like they’re being spoken down to.

It’s all coconuts and peaches

A common reason French people are perceived as being rude is a certain ‘frostiness’ and lack of desire to engage in small talk. The reason we might feel that way is all to do with fruit or nuts – metaphorical fruit that is.

The world is divided into “peaches” and “coconuts”. Or at least that’s according to German-American Psychologist Kurt Lewin, who says that cultures can be divided into these two foody labels.

Peaches are warm on the outside, and share personal stories, but make the mistake of thinking that is genuine intimacy and you’ll hit the core ‘inner self’ stone, Lewin argues. Whereas coconuts seem aloof and cold at first, but once you get through to their tough outer shell, they become genuine and open.

“French people are definitely coconuts in comparison with all the Anglo-Saxon countries,” Erin Meyer, author of The Culture Map told The Local.

“That’s one of the reasons that French people are considered arrogant is because they don’t smile at strangers, they’re very formal”.

If the French are coconuts, then that makes English speaking visitors mainly peaches, and that clash can create some awkwardness. The immediate openness of “peaches” can be off putting for “coconuts”.

Meyer says “the French can perceive that as being superficial and invasive”.

Meyer advises approaching French people in a humble but very friendly way, which can often result in their outer shell “melting away”. Just don’t be surprised if a French person doesn’t want to share their own personal life right away. 

‘French and arrogant’

In 2013, US research centre Pew Global found that of the eight EU countries surveyed, France was voted the second most arrogant country. 

Meyer argues that this perception is largely due to French attitudes to disagreement and negative feedback.

“The French are much more direct with negative feedback than any Anglo-Saxon country” says Meyer, “this is a big part of why any culture is considered to be arrogant”.

When a French person disagrees with what you’re saying, or think something could be improved, they’ll tell you straight away.

It’s simply not considered rude in France it’s just seen as normal. 

But the French criticism isn’t reserved for others, they’re just as critical of themselves. In the same Pew study, French people also ranked their own country as the most arrogant in the EU, which ironically, is actually quite humble.   

Noisiness

Muriel Damarcus of the blog French Yummy Mummy told The Local that one of the reasons that French people are considered to be rude is that they like their peace and quiet, and will tell you what they think in no uncertain terms if you disturb it.

“We don’t like noisy people, and can be quite snotty with them. For instance, it is not polite to speak too loudly in a queue or in a restaurant” she said.

French people will have few concerns about appearing rude by, for instance, telling parents to keep their children under control. If you’re the one making the noise, you’re fair game.

So the next time you have a problem with a French person, have a think about whether it could be down to any of these underlying reasons. And if after that, you still think they’ve been rude, then you’re probably right. Rude people do exist in the world, but perhaps they’re not all concentrated in France.  

By Rose Trigg, originally published in 2019

Member comments

  1. PS French people ARE (more or less) quiet, depending on what part of the country you are visiting. BUT, give them a few drinks, an evening together, and they rival Neopolitans! [well, not really, but…]

  2. I have taken my vacations in France for 25 years and now live here permanently. Apart from Parisiens, who the French think are rude, I have found the French to be among the politest people I have encountered. But as the article suggests they are very formal. I have known waiters who have kindly helped me understand a menu in a mix of my poor French and their poor English, become aloof and uncomprehending when faced with a table of Anglophones who they think have not showed them sufficient respect, or have behaved in a manner they consider impolite. A simple purchase requires observance of some rituals. “Bonjour monsieur” from the salesperson/till operator, requires a “bonjour” in response. On conclusion the minimum from you should be “Merci, au revoir”, or if they have been particularly helpful “merci beaucoup, au revoir”. Better still is “merci (beaucoup), bonne journée, au revoir”.
    I have had till operators giving me an eye-roll when the person ahead of me in the queue, invariably a tourist, fails to observe such niceties. In Provence, where I live, motorists will readily stop to allow you to cross the road, but will expect a wave of thanks in return.

  3. When I walk with my dog in Paris, it is only the American tourists that throw themselves at it, for a cuddle, without asking. A man even yelled across a park, from his table at restaurant, that it was beautiful, while I was in deep thought, because of a close friends unexpected death. People live and work in France and it was not built to entertain tourists. Unless visitors learn to, quietly, say hello, please, thank you, excuse me, etc, they are the rude ones, not us.

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LEARNING FRENCH

Is the English language really just ‘badly pronounced French’?

A French linguist has been making waves with his boldly-titled book 'The English language does not exist - it's just badly pronounced French', but does the professor actually have a point?

Published: 23 April 2024 14:35 CEST
Is the English language really just 'badly pronounced French'?

The French linguist Bernard Cerquiglini is clear that the title of his book should be taken with humour and a pinch of salt, beginning his work by explaining that it is a ‘bad faith proposition’.

Clearly, the English language does exist and equally clearly the French are a little uneasy about it – with numerous laws, national bodies and local initiatives attempting to fight back against the anglicisms that now litter everyday speech, from ‘c’est cool’ to ‘un job’. 

But Cerquiglini argues that the supposed ‘influx’ of English words that are now used in France, especially tech-related terms, is nothing compared to what happened when French literally invaded English in the Middle Ages.

And the close similarity that the two languages enjoy today – around 30 percent of English words are of French origin – speaks to this entwined history.

“You can also see my book as an homage to the English language, which has been able to adopt so many words… Viking, Danish, French, it’s astonishing,” he told AFP.

The history

The key date in the blending of English and French is the Norman conquest of 1066, when Duke William of Normandy invaded England with a small group of Norman knights and made himself the English king William the Conqueror.

What happened next was a radical re-ordering of society in which English nobles were displaced and William’s knights were installed as a new French-speaking (or at least Norman-speaking) ruling class. 

The use of French by the ruling classes continued into the 13th and 14th centuries, by which time French was the official language of the royal courts, diplomacy, the law, administration and trade – meaning that ambitious English people had no choice but to learn French in order to take part in official or legal processes. 

Cerquiglini says that half of all English’s borrowings from French took place between 1260-1400, with a heavy slant towards words related to nobility, trade, administration or the law.

But a large group of non-native speakers meant that the French spoken in England was already starting to evolve, and the French words ended up with different pronunciations or even a different meaning. 

As early as 1175, the records show a Frenchman in England snootily remarking that: “My language is good, because I was born in France”. 

English and French started to part ways from the mid-1400s, by which time the two countries no longer shared royalty (the last English possession in France, the port of Calais, was lost to the French in 1558) and gradually systems such as the law courts and trade began to be conducted in English.

French remained widely spoken as a second language by the nobility and the elite right up until the early 20th century and French is still the most widely-taught language in UK schools.

The similarities

It’s not always easy to distinguish between English words that have a French root and those that have a Latin root, but linguists estimate that around 29 percent of English words come from French, another 29 percent from Latin, 26 percent from German and the rest from other languages.

But many of the English words that do have a clear French root are related to nobility, administration, politics and the law.

For example the French words gouvernement, parlement, autorité and peuple are clearly recognisable to English speakers. Likewise budget, revenus, enterprise and taxe, plus avocat, cour, juge, magistrat and evidence.

Amusingly, the French and the English obviously found time to share many insults, including bâtard [bastard], crétin, imbecile, brute and stupide.

Adaptation

But most of the people in England who were speaking French did not have it as their mother tongue, so the language began to adapt. For example the French à cause de literally translates into English as ‘by cause of’ which over time became the English word ‘because’.

There are also words that started out the same but changed their meaning over time – for example the English word ‘clock’ comes from the French ‘cloche’ (bell), because in the Middle Ages church bells were the most common method of keeping track of the time for most people.

When the mechanical clock began to appear from the 14th century onwards, the French used a new term – une horloge – but the English stuck with the original.

The differences

One of the big differences between English and French is that English simply has more words – there are roughly 170,000 words in the English language, compared to about 135,000 in French.

And at least part of this comes from English being a ‘blended’ language – that English people hung on to their original words and simply added the French ones, which is why you often get several different English words that have the same translation in French eg clever and intelligent both translate into French as ‘intelligent’.

Another difference represents the class divide that the Norman invasion imposed between the French nobles and the English labourers.

For example the words pig and cow both have Anglo-Saxon roots, while pork and beef come from French (porc and boeuf) – so when the animal is in the field being looked after by English peasants it has an Anglo-Saxon name, but by the time it is on the plate being eaten by posh people, it becomes French.

There’s also a tendency in English for the more everyday words to have Anglo-Saxon origins while the fancier words have French origins – eg to build (English) versus to construct (French). In French construire is used for both. Or to feed (English) versus to nourish (French) – in French both are nourrir.

Faux amis

One consequence of English and French being so closely linked in the bane of every language-learner’s life – les faux amis (false friends).

These are words that look and sound very similar, but have a completely different meaning. If you don’t know the French word for something you can have a stab at saying the English word with a French pronunciation – and often you will be right.

But sometimes you will be wrong, and sometimes it will be embarrassing.

READ ALSO The 18 most embarrassing French ‘false friends’

Often, faux amis are words that have changed their meaning in one language but not the other – for example the French word sensible means sensitive, not sensible – which is why you can buy products for peau sensible (sensitive skin).

But it once meant sensitive in English too – for example in the title of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility – over time the meaning of the English word adapted but the French one stayed the same.

The title

And a word on that title – La langue anglaise n’existe pas, C’est du français mal prononcé (the English language does not exist, it’s just badly pronounced French) is actually a quote from former French prime minister Georges Clemenceau.

He did apparently speak English, but doesn’t appear to have been very fond of England itself – his other well-known quote on the topic is: “L’angleterre n’est qu’une colonie français qui a mal tourné” – England is just a French colony gone wrong.  

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