Talk to the Snail: Ten Commandments for Understanding the French

Published on September 17, 2007

With nothing more than a oui or a non to get by and nothing to forearm myself against the snooty manner of most Parisians, the trip wasn't entirely a success. And reading this book explains why.

It tells you why it is important to say "Bonjour, Madame/ Monsieur" to the person across the counter when all you really want to do is buy a bottle of milk. Why the average waiter, most certainly not "Garçon", doesn't consider it his business to serve you even though you've been waiting patiently for at least half an hour and need nothing more than a cup of coffee and maybe a pastry. Why everyone in Paris, even the mad cabbie who keeps jumping red lights (which apparently have been put there as a mild distraction to traffic), are always right. Why some foods have a certain "odour" and why "life is a finger buffet". (We're invited to imagine how many times the baguette we had for lunch had been handled and by how many people.)

Still, not everything about France is unpalatable. The food on offer is decidedly the best, and the French obsession with freshness means every supermarket stocks produce straight from the farms.

And apparently the health care system is brilliant and you can have any, well almost any, medicine you want over the counter - provided it's not on a weekend or a public holiday, when your need for aspirin will just have to wait. C'est la vie!

Though there are ways to get around all the cultural quirks (and the author explains how), there are some French idiosyncrasies you just have to accept. For instance, we're told that at large meals diners should always sit in a man-woman-man arrangement even though some members of the group may be otherwise inclined. And that men should never start eating until all the women have had their first forkful. Ordering non-French wine at a restaurant is also a no-no, unless every last bottle of local wine has been drained and there's nothing left but the Chilean vintage you desperately crave. We learn that national strikes are really only a pretext to party and that an ageing French rock star who seems to spew nothing but pure nonsense is actually a crooner of genius to the ears of the enlightened.

 And did you know that the French are a secretive race, who refuse to divulge even the simplest of facts. So there was a bomb scare? "You don't need to know," the official will tell you.

Luckily, every chapter ends with a list of phrases - some polite and some that might raise the odd eyebrow - to help the visitor. Phonetics make those tongue-twisting French words a little easier to deliver.

Like the back cover says, don't venture to France without reading this book. But even then, remember that the French are always right, and that aliens like Burger King and tom yum kung are suffered rather than welcomed.

By Stephen Clarke

Published by Black Swan

Available at Asia Books, Bt350