@Jane, yes Nice was at the heart of it but infact it was a huge area surrounding nice and into savoie
Oops...sorry...I met to say "many things that I find ridiculous" and not "mainly"...Freudian slip I fear! (joke...don't all have a go at me please...!)
@ Andrew: As far as I know it was only Nice that was part of Italy, not the rest...but the fact that it's "special" here has nothing to do with any Italian historical connections and more to do with the kind of people it attracts from other parts of France and from everywhere else in the world (!). Haha, yes, I'm well aware that I've just shot myself in the foot by saying that but my excuse is that my ex-husband moved us all out here so he could be a film producer...that's another long and exhausting story though!!) :))
I think that ultimately, as someone on here wrote (I'm afraid I can't remember their name right now) we all end up loving the bits of French life that we love and trying our best to ignore the ones we don't. I was born in Singapore and am a mixture of Chinese, French (yes, Steffi), Irish and English blood...I like the mixing pot of different experiences and I have after all been here for six years with no plans to return to London even though my adored family and best friends in the world live there. There are many things about the French that I love, mainly things that I find ridiculous but strangely "attachant" at the same times, but inevitably those things which make me just want to go around with a t-shirt on saying "I SEE DUMB PEOPLE" (reference to The Sixth Sense for those who are wondering what I'm on about)...
good point Brian, pretty much the same "behind the scenes" but it's something that everyone points out... ce serait bizarre si vos enfants...!
Look at it this way, if I consider my own discipline as a guide to how I live my life then I would live in total paranoia because anthropology culture sensitises one so acutely it could easily go very wrong. So I have two lives. That one and me, the ordinary bloke trying to do the best for my kids.
it was part of Italy until 1860 and the difference is still there, love it though ;-)
Yes Gretchen, you more or less described what we did when the older was born, for very complicated reasons, we talked and talked about it. Now, OK she is slow and there is far more than just speech but she has comprehension absolutely... We settled down and then, just to completely undermine any vestiges of that discussion, our younger is one of those natural born learners who picks up languages (and stuff like mathematics which I was all but excused at school by age 16 let alone being double as good as I ever was at eight!) like that. Now we do as you do. Conversations tend to be bilingual, occasionally trilingual with some Italian in for good measure, but when my daughter and wife are rapping in French my interventions are English and the little one's switch automatic. No bans on choice of TV language either. They like a programme and they watch it, so with my clever sat box with 800 or so channels it may be Arabic or Chinese rather than French or English ayway.
Many thanks for the encouragement Gretchen and Brian - I'm a bit paranoid being a languages teacher and having studied the language learning process etc. at the thought of "failing" and ending up with kids that can't speak to their cousins in England! It's very early days and they understand perfectly but only ever reply in French but they're only 4.5 and 2.5 so it really is early days! Interestingly my French isn't as fast as it used to be when that was all i ever used, now I spend so much time talking English to the kids the reflexes in French have been numbed a bit and I'm about to embark on another 5 months solid teaching french to chinese students :-O should be back up to speed by the end of the first week though (too much time spent translating in isolation!)
this has got a lot of people`s thoughts I have lived here (france )for two years but have been visiting my inlaws and family for sixteen years now,when I am in the uk I miss the French way of life and when in France I miss carol singers and public houses,I like the way that the French seem to be able to invent and make do with things ,My farther inlaw has made a rain shelter that fits nicley over the barbecue,the problem is it does not rain here that often maybe he sould be British ?
...one final gripe before I go and buy the turkey...if you think dealing with daily life in France in general is frustrating then you should try coming to live here on the Cote d'Azur! I think even Steffi would have to agree that le Sud is well-known even amongst the French for being "special"....
Oh, and, I almost forgot...has anyone had experience of trying to resolve inheritance situations with a notaire? Ha! The way they get away with doing whatever they damn well like (it seems to me having observed three French friends struggling for literally years to receive their rightful legacies) is just staggering...
Damit is alles an sich gesagt... But persist and make it normal and it takes on a life of its own.
Three words..."Jean de Florette"... :)
Apart from the chili bit before, thought about it and it is absolutely why we chose France. We had a year in the Algarve and would have dearly loved to live in Portugal. Great whilst my wife had a fellowship out of Cambridge and during that year I was in Ethiopia, Viet Nam, China and Azerbaijan with work so the ackers came in richly. Times have changed. To live there now with most of our Portuguese friends scarpered off to Lisbon for economic reasons, finding any chance of survival and so forth... Oh yeah! So we have also Switzerland, Italy or even Germany if we wanted. The circle did not square and we looked carefully at what suits our way of life and realised that much of what you say about the family, better way of life and people who can actually stand the reality of life when it gets tough without sinking into self pity as the English of the south do. Why not my ancestral Scotland - lovely idea but the climate and my rheumatism don't get on... The better life, as Andrew says, wins hands down any day.
I'm jealous! I'm determined to get mine bilingual but it's a struggle as I'm the only English input they have and everything's in French between me and OH. I try introducing a bit of italian for fun at times, sometimes it works but they usually scream for me to stop, depends on their mood and as it's always one way they can't see the point - difficult enough with two languages - and anyway "purtroppo il mio italiano è andata in rovine"!
No no no, Richard keep posting - it's interesting debate and I've been slated enough times for moaning about how difficult it is to do business here and only yesterday had to conceed that the education system is pretty crap too - but that's all part of this forum. I have a good go when something really isn't working (and I'm having a go alongside my French OH and the rest of the French population - tax system, autoentrepreneur changes etc) but I think a fair few of us tried reading too much between your lines and read in a bit of "why on earth isn't it like back in blighty". Believe me once you've lived here you'd never imagine eating outside the regular hours or trying to buy doliprane anywhere but in a pharmacie - it becomes second nature, honest! the lunchtime thing also means that even in peak season you've got a couple of hours where the traffic isn't too bad because everyone has stopped for lunch - I'm serious there, it's worth remembering ;-)
In short, there are some really crappy things about France and some really good things, these change from area to area too: from your deepest rural Limousin to plan de campagne just outside Marseille which is open late and 7 days a week, or life in any big French town for that matter. It's cultural, related to the tax and charges sociales systems and the very deeply rooted traditions + the French need to pigeonhole everybody - a garage can't sell doliprane or food, it's a garage and garages sell petrol...
Allez, bonne continuation et vive la différence !
Good moaning, Ronald. Avez vous gut gekipped? I have a trip to Bergerac with children to buy mama her presents (with my card, of course) and am dreading it. I wonder if one of those there suicide capsules could be administered with lunch, I need the extra sleep......
We mix and match. In effect we are a trilingual household at present because we use French or English as it comes to get bilinguality entrenched for the children, Italian pervades because of phone calls, Skype and visits from the Swiss, especially only surviving grandparent (he speaks all four Swiss languages very well, so that encourages them) and with the younger who learns at a rate of knots. I am beginning to throw in German here and there. So chaos ensues and heck knows how any of us actually write or even occasionally speaks any single language to make the slightest sense. However, another point I wish to add is that humour is different, very different indeed, between language groups and is a key to learning how to USE any of them. Believe me, I can actually tell funny jokes in German which is occasionally a bit of a task given that jokes go strong on verbs as a rule and in German one tends to save them all up and deliver them in a heap toward the end of a sentence...
oh no not again, my english really is going to pot! - kids were playing up behind me whilst trying to type so I sort of have an excuse! - oh and "your no longer at school" speach at uni - got shot down in a dept meeting when I suggested that here - more saussages it is then!