We have now been living in France for over five months, which means we are nearly to the halfway point of our time here. We have really been enjoying Albertville and thought it might be fun to share some of the more bizarre or comical things we’ve come across in French culture and in the French language.
We’ll start with the language:
- The French word « avocat » means both attorney and avocado. This was very comical to us when we first arrived here and, only knowing the avocado translation, were seeing signs around town for what appeared to be an office for avocados.
2. Rollercoasters in French are called “montagnes russes” which literally translates to “Russian mountains”.
3. They have two different words for twins: one if they are twin boys and one if they are twin girls. The word for twin girls is “jumelles” which is also the word for binoculars.
4. The French name for a magic wand is a “baguette magique” which as you can you probably tell is literally just a magical baguette.
5. The French language loves their vowels which leads to words like “jouaient” which has five consecutive vowels. Not to be confused with jouer, jouais, jouait, joué, or jouai which are all different forms of this same verb that all have the same exact pronunciation. I also just came across “créée” this week which is fairly unique with its three consecutive e’s.
6. Counting in French is the absolute weirdest. Things are fairly normal from 1-69 and you are feeling pretty good about yourself. But then you hit 70 and instead of having a new word like seventy in English, they call 70 soixante-dix which is literally « sixty-ten ». This continues with sixty-eleven (71), sixty-twelve (72) until they drop another bomb on you at 80 which is quatre-vingt which is literally « four-twenty ». Ninety? Yeah that’s « quatre-vingt-dix » which is literally « four-twenty-ten ». With these naming conventions they’ve turned simple counting into a mental math exercise.
In terms of French culture, here are a few things we’ve found interesting / funny / surprising.
- Peeing in public is legal here. It’s not uncommon to walk up to the grocery store and there will be a guy peeing in the grass on the edge of the parking lot.
- A cup of coffee isn’t really a thing in French culture. If you order a “café” which is the word for coffee, it will be an espresso. However, they do love their espressos and most restaurants offer them for after your meal. We have had no problem adjusting to this.
- Food is a huge aspect of French culture and they place a lot of value on where it comes from, with a huge emphasis on local production. This means that restaurants and bakeries change their menu frequently to match what ingredients are in season. They also vary their prices based on the specific ingredients. For example, in the grocery store there may be three or four types of hummus of the same brand but each of them will be priced differently.
- Lunch is a big deal here! We get a 2+ hour lunch break as does Mia in the public school system. It’s very common for many small, local stores to close for a couple of hours in the afternoon for a lunch break.
- Most restaurants that are open for lunch will close for several hours before opening again for dinner. The French eat a much later dinner so often restaurants won’t open up again until 6:30 or 7. This makes having dinner out as a family very difficult since our kids usually go to bed at 7 and become pumpkins by 8.
- College in France is nearly free for most students—free as in there is little to no tuition paid out of pocket. Now taxes on the other hand…
It’s been a lot of fun to learn about and experience a new culture, even if we are just here for a year. It has left us all the more excited for this same learning process in Senegal!
– Adam