[BITList] French Kissing, not as easy as you think!

[fredmno at aol.com]

Salaams,
             yet anther smuggled out letter from captivation!

             you might think in your ignorance that kissing in France is simple, alas not so. I've made some terrible blunders whilst I've been here and I'll relate but two. When at lunch with friends I  was asked if I would like some more meat to which I replied just a soupcon which can mean the merest hint of a piece which is as near as you can go without being impolite but in fact I used the word sucon meaning I wished to love bite (hickey) my hostesses neck, thank goodness her husband is partially deaf. The second and by far the biggest gaff was when I arrived at my eldest sons French teachers house, he needed extra lessons as he was nearly twelve when we arrived, anyway after she opened the door I asked for jokingly a baise moi which in modern day France means a bonk quite literally as opposed to a bisou which means kiss, I'd got my information from an English comedy show called 'Brushstrokes', you may have seen it, the sex mad hero was called 'Jacko' it shoud have given me a clue, doh!
              Every day greetings can be a nightmare. The French kiss on the cheek is a regional thing inasmuch as some departments are two, some three and some four, the Indre where we live is four, though to complicate things further for children its always two untill they are mid teens, the boys stop at about thirteen unless they are very close friends, to cloud the water even further going from shaking hands to kissing can be a minefield. Yet another innovation is that the young adults here find four kisses just too much and are reverting to two, a clue as to your standing is if you get air kissed when there is no physical contact (as in celebraties) its an insult here. 
              I still have my confusing days as to shaking hands also, I was always taught to stand up when shaking a persons hand, a la when a woman enters the room, I still do both, but here its acceptable to remain seated, I confess I may be wrong, anyone any thoughts?
                      BR Fred
Given up on the tunnel, I'm making a plane on the nearest chateau's roof!

For your edification.



     
210 - French Kissing Map

    
Filed under:  Uncategorized —  strangemaps @  


    

        

















Over 18.000 votes have been cast in a poll to determine once and for all the answer to the burning question: Combien de bises? That’s French for ‘How many kisses’, and kissing in France is a lot more complex the French’s somewhat overstated reputation for carefree libidinosity implies.


Unlike
more reserved nationalities, the French greet each other with kisses on
the cheek – but the practice varies to the point where one risks l’embarras social
when the kisser has another number of pecks on the cheek in mind than
the kissee. Suppose, for a moment, that you intend to give three kisses
and the other person turns away after two. Ah, the humilitation!


This
must have happened a few times to Gilles Debunne, because earlier in
2007 he set up a website to resolve the French kissing conundrum once
and for all. Debunne asked his compatriotes to send in how many kisses were the rule in their particular département. The number, which varies from one to four (five is too much, even for the French), shows an interesting regional variability. 



One kiss is the preferred option in only two départements:      Finistère at the western tip of Brittany and      Deux-Sèvres in the Poitou-Charentes region.

Elsewhere
in Poitou-Charentes, three kisses are preferred: in the departments of
Vienne and Charente. The largest block of three-kiss-départements      is located in the southeast. Trois bises are the thing to do in Ardèche, Aveyron, Cantal,      Drôme, Haute Loire, Hautes Alpes, Hérault, Gard, Lozère and Vaucluse.

Four kisses are de rigueur in a large region in northeastern France. Apart      from the isolated coastal département
of Pas de Calais, this is a contiguous area, consisting of 22
départements from Normandy to the Belgian border: Ardennes, Aube,
Calvados, Eure, Eure et Loire, Haute Marne, Indre, Indre et Loire,
Loire et Cher, Loire Atlantique, Loiret, Maine et Loire, Manche, Marne,
Mayenne, Orne, Sarthe, Seine et Marne, Seine-St-Denis, Val d’Oise,
Vendée and Yonne.

The rest of the country is two-kisses territory,      apart from the same département in
northeast Paris that stood out by turning Royal red amidst a sea of
Sarkozy blue in the first round of the French presidential elections
earlier this year (see entry #108).



Not visualised in this map is the confusion within the départements. Apparently, the quatre bises won out only just in Pas de Calais, narrowly defeating the almost 50% who said they preferred just deux. What happens when representatives of the former group meet someone from the latter one? A faux Pas de Calais? And that’s not even taking into account the class and age distinctions that may play a role in how many kisses are required – or even whether they are expected at all. 


“If
you are invited to a dinner party with people you don’t know, you’ll
shake their hands when you arrive. At the end of the evening, you might
kiss them but it’s probably better to hold out your hand and see what
happens,” says Constance Rietzler, director of La Belle École in Paris, offering courses in art and hopefully also joie de vivre, and quoted in this article in The Times on Mr Debunne’s website.


The map was sent in by Romke Soldaat of the website Frogsmoke,
which asks the question: “What makes France such an endearing and
infuriating country at the same time?

Why are the French a people that
you love one day and hate the next?” And gives some pretty funny answers. Well worth a read.


 


 


 















    


    

                            



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20081102/0976c4e6/attachment-0001.shtml