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Cassoulet to cider: Where are France’s fiercest local rivalries?

From football to breakfast pastries, France contains some fierce local rivalries which are mostly fought through words and gastronomy, but occasionally spill over into physical battles. Here's a look at where near neighbours in France love to hate each other.

Published: 21 September 2021 11:13 CEST
Updated: 22 June 2022 10:07 CEST
Cassoulet to cider: Where are France's fiercest local rivalries?
People demonstrate to call for the unification of Loire-Atlantique and Brittany in 2016 in Nantes. Photo: JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD / AFP.

The French may have a love-hate relationship with many of their close neighbours, but the greatest ire is often directed at their fellow citizens. These are some of the conflicts you should only wade into with caution.

Normandy and Brittany over Mont-Saint-Michel (and cider)

Mont-Saint-Michel is officially in Normandy. Photo: Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP.

Not all of France’s rivalries are quite as violent as football brawls, but it would be a mistake to take them lightly. That’s the case for Brittany and Normandy, which between them account for a significant portion of France’s northern coast. And it’s a stretch of this coastline that has provided one of the key areas of contention between them. More specifically, the Mont-Saint-Michel, which has at times been a literal battleground between the two sides.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site is officially in Normandy, but Bretons also like to stake a claim to the island. The conflict came to a head in 2018, when the town’s mayor tried to erect a Breton flag alongside those of Normandy and France, but was forced to remove it following complaints.

Of course, this being France, the rivalry also plays out at the dinner table. Not only do the two populations disagree over who makes the best cider, they can’t even agree on how to drink it. While in Normandy, cider is usually served in a glass, in Brittany it comes in a traditional bolée (bowl).

Lille and Lens over football

Six people were injured in confrontations between supporters during the Derby du Nord opposing the Racing Club de Lens and LOSC Lille over the weekend. Lens supporters unveiled an insulting sign which spelled out “Lillois merda” (Shit Lille), before invading the pitch to confront the Lille fans, some of whom had been throwing projectiles in the opposite direction, according to La Voix du Nord.

While situated in different départements, Lens (Pas-de-Calais) and Lille (Nord) are separated by fewer than 40 kilometres, but their fierce antagonism is often portrayed as a clash of cultures – the working class town of Lens was hard hit by the closure of the region’s mines, while Lille is seen as a more middle-class, cosmopolitan city – even if that’s certainly a generalisation.

The rivalry has been stoked by the two football clubs’ differing fortunes over the years, with Lille more recently gaining the ascendancy over their rivals after Lens dominated in the 1990s.

Lyon and Saint-Etienne also over football

Saint-Etienne’s fans hold up banners reading “Death to Lyon”. Photo: PHILIPPE DESMAZES / AFP.

There are 60 kilometres separating these two towns in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. Their rivalry may be best known for the tension between their respective football clubs but, as with Lille and Lens, the acrimony has deeper, cultural routes.

After the French revolution, Saint-Etienne began to grow and to rival its larger neighbour. This created a certain amount of jealousy, “especially as there was a symbolic element of the dirty city beating the rich city,” sociologist and writer Jean-Noël Blanc told Le Progrès.

However, inequalities continued, particularly in Saint-Etienne’s textile industry, where “lots of purchasers were from Lyon, which wasn’t particularly well received,” he added.

There’s also a very long-standing football rivalry – according to Le Progrès, one match against Lyon Olympique Villeurbanne in 1936 ended in a brawl, with the referee having to be evacuated, and a director from Lyon running off with all the money from the game so Saint-Etienne wouldn’t earn a thing.

South-west and everywhere else over pastries

Speaking of food and drink, French pastries have long been fodder for perhaps the fiercest debate of all: pain au chocolat or chocolatine?

It can often feel like France is split down the middle over what to call the breakfast snack, but in reality it’s mostly only people from the south-west of France who prefer the term chocolatine.

Even so, for many the word has come to represent their regional identity, and people from either side of the debate will fiercely defend their camp. One thing everybody can agree on though is that they are delicious.

Toulouse, Carcassonne and Castelnaudary over cassoulet

What we have here is a rare, three-way rivalry between these towns in south-west France. Of course, it could only be a row over food. The reason? They all claim to be home to the best cassoulet: a hearty stew containing meat and beans.

Each area has its own traditional recipe: in Castelnaudary, goose or duck is used for the meat, in Toulouse it’s sausage or mutton, and when they’re in season, restaurants in Carcassonne will add partridge.

We’re not sure how the locals have the energy for all that arguing after eating a delicious, filling cassoulet, but some have tried to bring people together. French chef Prosper Montagné once attempted to reconcile the three towns into a holy trinity of cassoulet recipes: Castelnaudary the Father, Carcassonne the Son, and Toulouse the Holy Spirit.

Special mention here to the people of Burgundy and Bordeaux, and all those who have chosen a side, for carefully maintaining similar mutual resentment over who makes the best wine.

Alsace and Lorraine over history

You might think of Alsace-Lorraine as one entity, with memories of your history teacher telling you how the historical region was returned to France from Germany in 1918 as part of the Treaty of Versailles, but, like siblings who don’t get on, it’s often people with the most in common who hate each other the most.

The animosity between these two dates back hundreds of years, perhaps to 1525, historian Bernard Vogler told France 3, when the catholic Duke of Lorraine sent his army to crush a revolt of protestant peasants, killing 30,000 Alsatians. According to Vogler, the situation was reversed during the German annexation of the region between 1871 and 1918, when the Germans gave the best jobs to protestants, leaving those in Moselle in northern Lorraine “feeling like second class citizens”.

And nowhere was François Hollande’s 2015 regional reform more firmly opposed than in this part of the country, with Alsace, Lorraine and Champagne-Ardenne merging to become the new Grand Est region. In January 2021, the départements of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin merged to create the European Collectivity of Alsace, this recovering in a sense their historical region – while this is still part of the Grand Est, the move does show the enduring importance of regional identity in eastern France.

The ill feeling can also be seen on the football pitch during the “Derby de l’Est” opposing FC Metz in Lorraine and RC Strasbourg in Alsace.

Brittany and Pays de la Loire over Nantes

Over on the west side of the country, one département is at the heart of a conflict between two regions. Historically a part of Brittany, the Loire-Atlantique département was separated from the region during World War II by the Vichy government, and instead attached to what would in 1955 become the Pays-de-la-Loire region.

In Nantes and surrounding areas, pro-Breton voices have become increasingly loud in recent years, and in February the town council of Nantes voted in favour of organising a referendum to give locals a say over whether to rejoin Brittany.

While referendums over leaving a larger entity have proved, erm, controversial in recent years, 66 percent of those who live in Pays-de-la-Loire believe it would be legitimate for the people of Loire-Atlantique to decide their fate via a referendum, according to a survey from earlier this year.

Paris and Marseille over everything (and football)

PSG supporters hold a banner reading “It’s war!” before a match with Marseille in 2018. Photo: GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP.

This is perhaps the most famous rivalry in France, with football-related battles being just the tip of the iceberg.

Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique de Marseille regularly dispute “Le Classique” derby, despite being based at opposite ends of the country. As two of France’s most successful clubs they also have fans all over the country (president Emmanuel Macron is a long-term Marseille fan, despite being born in Amiens in northern France).

But the cultural battle goes much deeper – between north and south; between France’s two largest cities; between the rich capital and working-class port town; between chic Parisians and feisty Mediterraneans.

This conflict has also played out during the Covid-19 pandemic, with Marseille becoming a symbol of revolt against health measures decided upon in Paris, and controversial local microbiologist Didier Raoult establishing himself as a cult hero in the southern city.

Paris and, well, everywhere…

The culture clash between Paris and Marseille could be considered an extreme version of the relationship most of France has with the capital.

“Mistrust towards Paris is not the exception, it’s the rule, but people pay more attention to it when it happens in Marseille because it fits into their world-view,” Nicolas Maisetti, a political researcher at the Gustave Eiffel University Paris-Est, told The Local last year.

In other parts of the country, Parisians are often portrayed as cold, unfriendly snobs. This resentment was exacerbated during the Covid pandemic as many people from the capital rushed to their second homes in south-west France.

And if the rest of France hates Paris, it can often seem like the feeling is mutual.

In the 2008 Coupe de la Ligue final between PSG and Lens, the Parisian fans unfurled a banner reading, “Pédophiles, chômeurs, consanguins: bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” (Pedophiles, unemployed, inbreds: welcome to the North), in reference to the hit film Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Welcome to the Sticks) which had just been released.

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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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