One of those many things the Frenchie in us has difficulty in understanding
about you Anglo-Saxons is the fact that, in contrast to the more formal French
approach where the use of Monsieur, Madame or Mademoiselle
to address strangers is de rigueur, your notion of friendly politeness
requires you to greet people you’ve never met in your life before in the most
familiar of terms. During our holidays in England last year, for example, we walked
into a small shop, only to be welcomed
by an assistant, young enough to be our grand-daughter, and whom we’d never
clapped eyes on in our life before, with a cheery, ‘Hello, young man!’ Her greeting
smacked so much of inappropriate familiarity that both our French and Englishman
joined together in firmly pointing out that, since she would never have
addressed a genuine young man in this way, what really prompted her greeting
was, in fact, the very opposite to what she was attempting to imply – namely,
that we were no longer a young man. So how is it possible for the uninformed
Frenchman not to fall into total confusion in a country where codes of friendly
politeness require you to call a man ‘a young man’ when he’s not a young man,
but rarely call a man ‘a young man’ when he is a young man, and where it’s
quite possible to address both an old man and a young boy as ‘young man’, and
both a young man and an old man as ‘old boy?’ Isn’t it far more logical to show
friendly politeness towards people you know, and just polite politeness with
those you don’t?
Mind you, we probably got off
lightly. For such is the importance you Anglo-Saxons attach to instant friendship
that when you go into a shop you can be addressed by someone you’ve not had the
pleasure of meeting before with a disconcerting variety of familiar appellations
which can only lead the foreign observer to surmise that you’re on the most
intimate of terms. What’s more, this obsession with on-the-spot closeness obliges
us to invite people we’ve never in our life mucked the pigs out with to address
us by our Christian name, or even its diminutive, and to take the liberty of
using theirs. Last Saturday evening, for instance, we were invited to a dinner
party given by a couple of English friends.
‘I don’t think you know Jennifer
and John,’ said our hostess by way of introduction to a couple we’d never met
before.
‘Oh, just call me Jennie,’
replied the lady, her cheeks creasing into the sweetest of smiles.
This addiction to instantaneous
friendship can, however, show its limits. This was illustrated one day last
summer when we took ourself along to an agricultural show with an English
friend and his wife. As we were walking past one stand a young woman rushed up
to our friend’s wife.
‘How wonderful to see you
again!’ she effused, seizing her in a smothering embrace. A brief conversation
followed between them after which we continued on our way.
‘Yes, I met her at a dinner
party a couple of weeks ago,’ my friend’s wife explained, ‘but I can’t for the
life of me remember her name!’
This blog is based on an article from the author’s latest book, Barry’s Frenglish Folies - ‘A potpourri of humorous, serious, and humorously serious reflections on the French and English seen through the eyes of a split-identity and occasionally demented Frenglishman’.
Barry’s Frenglish Folies is available as a free Ebook download at :
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