{"id":1729,"date":"2014-01-15T07:41:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T12:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=1729"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:31:32","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:31:32","slug":"how-to-screw-up-in-paris-what-nobody-bothered-to-tell-me-about-living-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2014\/01\/15\/how-to-screw-up-in-paris-what-nobody-bothered-to-tell-me-about-living-abroad\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Screw Up in Paris: What Nobody Bothered to Tell Me About Living Abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve read my other blogs<\/a> you know that I am an old guy who is trying to learn \u2013 really, really learn \u2013 a language other than my mother tongue.\u00a0 It\u2019s been an embarrassingly large number of years (yes, years) since I stuck that first tentative toe in the water of \u201cFrench 101\u201d at the Harvard Extension School.\"DSC00522c\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since then, I have spent a total of nearly a year living in France (almost all in Paris), in annual six-week chunks, throughout the past eight years.\u00a0 I have tried hard not to be a tourist or a visitor, but have done my best just to become a local, living like the locals live \u2013 and always<\/span> in the local language.<\/p>\n

But it turns out one needs more than the language to get along as more than a tourist<\/b>.\u00a0 Tourists are tolerated.\u00a0 They are expected to be ignorant of the niceties of social intercourse in the places they visit, but they are not admired for that lack.<\/p>\n

In a place like Paris \u2013 as with many places in the world \u2013 if an American walked into a shop and opened with a courteous \u201cI\u2019d like to buy a scarf, please,\u201d the salesperson probably wouldn\u2019t even blink.\u00a0 She\/he would respond politely, most often in serviceable, if not excellent, English, and get on with selling you a very nice scarf.\u00a0 But as the customer passed out of the store, the salesperson would likely be feeling something between annoyance and disdain for pathetic Americans, who not only are stubbornly monolingual, but who also don\u2019t even know the first elements of proper behavior.<\/p>\n

\u201cLa politesse\u201d<\/i> (good manners, politeness) is really important in France, and no less so in public places and among strangers than among people who are acquainted.<\/b>\u00a0 In French culture, there are a number of \u2013 often minor, but surprisingly important \u2013 cultural nuances that an avid French learner should be made aware of. For example:<\/p>\n