Ceci n'est pas une endive

Die quadratische Quiche

notafish — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:20:00 +0100

Une nouvelle série sur la vie en Allemagne, les allemands et la langue allemande. En allemand. Première partie : la quiche :)

Also, dieses Blogpost sollte:

meine Schulden bei den Ironblogger Berlin irgendwie ein Bißchen runter halten
der Start einer neuen Serie von Blogposts auf Deutsch sein. Ja, auf Deutsch. Ich bin mir nicht ein Mal sicher, dass es überhaupt deutschsprachige Leute die dieses Blog lesen gibt, aber wir werden es Mal versuchen. Vielleicht, wenn ich es wirklich schaffe, werde ich sogar ein eigenes Blog für die quadratische Quiche Serie eröffnen, aber da ich schon zwei Wochen im Ironblogger Berlin Contest bin, und kein Blogpost geschrieben habe, könnte man das ernshaft bezweifeln.

Na gut. Warum die Quadratische Quiche? Eine Sache, die das irgendwo-anders-leben echt schwierig macht, ist das Kochen. Wie so? Kochen, bzw. essen ist (zu mindest für eine Französin, die essen und kochen mag) ein grosser Teil einer Kultur. Und die französische Kultur ist sowieso mit Essen eng verbunden. Also, für jemanden, wie ich, der kochen mag, ist die Möglichkeit "wie zu Hause" zu kochen eine echt wichtige Sache. Meine erste Erfahrung mit dem im Ausland kochen war in den USA. Ehrlich gesagt, das war... die Hölle. Ich wollte eine Zitrone Tarte machen (ha! Deutsch hat das französiches Wort gestolen!). Für die braucht man Butter. Ganz normale Butter. Wie in... Butter ohne Salz. Damals (1989) unsalziges Butter war in New Mexico nicht zu finden. Anyway. Zurück zur Quiche.

Da ich eher eine lazy Köchin bin, habe ich von meiner Mutter mir die leichtesten Rezepte gemerkt. Die Rezepte, die man unter 30 Minuten in guten Essen umwandeln kann. Darunter ist ein super gutes und super einfaches Quiche Rezept. Wie in "Quiche Lorraine"^[1]. Eine Quiche ist in 15 Minuten gemacht, in ungefähr 30 Minuten gebacken, füttert eine Familie von vier locker, und ist einfach lecker. A winner für die lazy Köchin. Ich muss dazu geben, dass ich den Teig nicht selbst mache, weil Blätterteig viel zu kompliziert ist, aber unsere Zeiten sind so, dass man kann in jedem Supermarkt fertigen Blätterteig kaufen kann.

Aber... in Deutschland, Blätterteig wird für alles, ausser eine Quiche benutzt. Ich vermute das häufigste Gericht, was man in Deutschland mit Blätterteig macht, ist Apfelstrudel, oder so was ähnliches. Und daher ist der Teig, den man im Supermarkt findet, quadratisch. Eigentlich eher rechteckig, aber das ist ein Detail. Und eine Quiche, wenn sie Quiche heissen will, muss (wie in muss, nicht sollte) rund sein. Rund. Wie die Sonne, der volle Mond oder einen Fußball. Nicht quadratisch. Nicht rechteckig. No way. Ich habe lange gesucht. Rewe, damals Tengelmann, Aldi usw. Kein runder Teig. Pech gehabt. Aber OK, ich bin Französin, habe mich entschieden, nach Deutschland auszuwandern, ich muss damit leben können. Aber eine quadratisch Quiche? Das ist echt schwer. Besonders weil ich eigentlich nur eine runde Form für die Quiche habe. Gut, ich bin einfallsreich ^[2] und kann mich anpassen an die kommische Kochenart der Deutschen. Ich kaufe trotzdem den quadratischen Teig. Und mache ihn rund. Schere und hop. So ist die Quiche eine echte Quiche, und damit meine Integrität als französiche Köchin behaltet. Und dazu gewinnt man auch ein paar Ecken um kleinen Käse Croissants zu machen.

Ich würde trotzdem ganz gerne wissen, warum der Blätterteig in Deutschland rechteckig ist. Macht ihr keine Quiche? Oder habe ich nur die falsche Supermärkte in meiner Nähe? Na gut, ihr könnt das Rezept von der Quiche meiner Mutter bei Lyzzy finden. Ich werde nur dazu sagen, dass der Käse in der Quiche darf kein Gouda sein (ich weiss, Gouda war nur eine Maßgabe für den richtigen Käse) :P. Bei Rewe findet man einen echt guten Meule d'Or geriebenen Emmental für den Zweck, macht die Quiche noch französischer.

Notes

[1] Wir werden gleich bitte die ganze Debatte: "Lothringen ist aber kaum Frankreich, und fasst schon Deutschland" gleich hier halten, die Quiche ist französich, Wikipedia hat's gesagt :P

[2] Das Wort habe ich aus Leo, hoffe es passt. "Voll gute Ideen" oder so.

Time is Relative

notafish — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:28:00 +0200

Où j'explique combien la perception du temps varie selon le cadre de référence. Par exemple, sur internet, un site qui a dix ans est un site vieux, alors qu'un hôtel ou un café qui a 10 ans et le montre est plutôt ridicule.

Among the cultural dimensions laid out by Geert Hofstede, there is one that is based on time and our relationship to it. He calles it "Long term orientation". The idea behind this is that culture shapes the way we relate to time, or rather, that our behaviour inscribes itself in a frame that also has a relationship to time.

There is a pretty standard exercise you can do when trying to help people get the grip on cultural differences, which consists of asking them to give a value to fuzzy propositions and see how they come up with different answers. For time, it could be something like this:

He came late to the meeting

People then have to say whether "late" means 5 minutes, 15 minutes or an hour, or whatever length of time "late" means to them. In a German/French crowd, you'll probably have much longer delays among the French than among the Germans (a stigmata of the legendary German punctuality). A French may answer (well, at least I would) at least 20 minutes, while for a German, 5 minutes is already very late. Just to show,

I keep noticing how companies, great or small, tend to tell how long they've been around. How many times have you crossed a truck that said proudly "Company & Sons, Established 1985". I must say that every time I see this, and the date is a date which I have memories from (I would say my first "public" memory is 1981, when Mitterrand was elected president of France), I feel that boasting about it is a bit over the top. "I mean, seriously, you make pipes and electrical ware since 1985, who cares?" But then I actually make the calculation and realize that well, that's about 30 years. Pretty good, actually.

Of course, you have the "really old" ones. Our very own baker in Königstein "Haus der Qualität seit 1750" (House of quality since 1750) displays an experience dating back 260 years, quite an achievement indeed. In Europe in general, you'll see lots of businesses displaying proudly their ancient experience. Hotels, Cafés and restaurants are specialists of the genre.

While surfing a few days back, however, it came to me that internet has introduced a very interesting and new relationship to time. The internet (or the web, if we want to be precise) has existed for the general public for no more than 15 years. Which makes the whole frame of reference rather awkward. I stumbled upon a few blogs in the past few days which made a case of how long they had been around. 2003, 1999, 2000. In relative time, ie. in my lifespan's frame, this is rather young, not to say it's almost just yesterday. And yet, in the web's lifespan, this is like... ancient.

What I find interesting, is how my own relationship to time changes depending on the context. I'd be impressed with a website that's been around for 10 years and is still successful, but not so with a Café that can only boast of a 10 year long experience. Not to mention that I feel very young, so any business boasting "Around since 1971" would be construed as bragging in my mind's eye (yeah, you, Starbucks!). Come on, I'm not "that" old, that you'd want to tell the world you've been around for that long!

What about you? Do you also feel this stretch in time depending on what you're looking at?

Image sources:

Heaphys Quality Menswear - Established in the reign of William IV - © Elliott Brown - CC-BY
Established 1971 - © Kim Navarre - CC-BY-SA
Image with blog exerpts from: Stephanie Booth's website, Steve Ivy's website Monkinetic, Robert Basic's blog.

What Is Your Single Story?

notafish — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:32:00 +0100

A few weeks ago, I watched a fantastic talk by Chimamanda Adichie about "The Danger of A Single Story". The talk is a year old, but the message is ageless. It made me think about what my stories of "single stories" are. I have a few, actually, here is one that particularly struck me.

When I left for the US in 1987, I was hosted in an American family for a night. My English at the time was rather bad, not to say inexistant, and I struggled trying to understand what was going on around me. The family had taken me and another girl, K., to host us for the night, while waiting for the schoolbus to come and get us in Albuquerque. It was a family of 4, with two daughters, one our age (I was 15, K. was 16 or 17 at the time and I think the daughter was 16). K. was from Bulgaria. I was, obviously, from France. The 16-year old daughter was somehow studying Eastern Europe (or had a strong interest in it) and was thrilled at the idea of having a Bulgarian (remember, this is 1987) in her house. She didn't seem to give a damn about France, which was great, because she kept on asking K. questions about her country, and left me alone. Given that we both had been travelling around 18 hours, and my English being what it was, I could only feel for K. who was being bombarded with questions about Eastern Europe. Anyway. In the course of the conversation, the girl turned to me and asked me "Is there electricity in France". I had to rub my eyes (red from lack of sleep) and make sure I had understood the question before I could answer a feeble... "yes". No words to argue, the question was so out of line from someone who had been debating the whys and whens and hows of Eastern Europe, that I was just left completely dumbstruck by the enormity of it. Off we went to sleep. The day after, the daughter took us to a Safeway (one of those big American supermarkets). I still remember K.'s wide open eyes who was, it seems, rather amazed at the display of so much "stuff" in one place. The American girl turned to me with a smug smile and asked "Do you have that in France?". I mastered the best English I could and answered "Bigger ones".

This girl had a single story. She was studying Eastern Europe and for her, Europe was that. The rest of Europe may have been a Middle-Age kind of place, without electricity or supermarkets. She didn't know. I wasn't at all knowledgeable on Eastern Europe (but kind of had an idea), and was amazed at the hundreds of questions she asked K. because I couldn't have asked such questions. But those she asked me were just... weird, she had no perspective.

It is interesting so many years after to be able to frame what was one of my first culture shocks ever. I can only urge you to watch the video. It's fun, and it's so true. And I'm curious, what is Your single story?

I Didn't Feel So White

notafish — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:44:00 +0200

Petit résumé de mon voyage éclair en Afrique du Sud. L'omniprésence des panneaux "armed response" (réponse armée) sur les murs des maisons, fraude à la carte bancaire, l'hiver en plein été et le fait que je ne me suis pas sentie "blanche".

I went to South Africa for the week-end. It was a few weeks ago already, but ever since I've wanted to write something about it. A week-end, mind you, is definitely not enough to get the hang of a country, but I guess it is just enough to get a feel of it.

So what I remember, in a nutshell and a non exhaustive kind of way.

It starts, I guess, with the "Armed response" signs and the spiked fences. (As an aside, it is interesting to see that typing "fence armed response" as a Google search will trigger in the first results South African security companies websites, even in a French browser session). Those were everywhere. I don't think I've ever seen so many shapes and sorts of spikes. I have to admit I went to South Africa with this in mind, the "insecurity" one hears so much about. It was striking. What "Armed response" really means left me wondering though. I felt a bit like in a James Bond kind of movie, and saw in my mind's eye bodyguards springing out of every corner as soon as someone would try and go over the fence. Mind you, at no time did I feel unsafe, but then I was in the safe areas and always with someone.

I was scammed. Quite cleverly really. One of those scams you see on TV, which consists in someone taking your credit card and copying the magnetic strip to use it afterwards. It was so well done that I returned to my taxi with my credit card in the hand, and apologized to the scammers thinking I had wronged them when I accused them of stealing it. I only discovered a few days later what they had done.That kind of stuff happens everywhere, so it's not like I'll remember South Africa as the country in which I was scammed. The scam was well executed, and I really never felt threatened. I certainly have felt less safe walking around Rome, for example.

I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that it was winter. The trees were yellowish, brownish and my friend was going on about how Johannesburg is so green. It didn't fit, because well, in winter, not so much. But since I was coming from our (non-existent) Northern Hemisphere summer, and the temperature was around the 20°C during the day, it had all the prerequisite of summer to me, without the actual green. I'll have to go back when Johannesburg is really green, I guess.

But the most interesting feeling I had is, I didn't feel so white. And by white, I suppose I mean "out of place", to some extent. I wrote an essay back in 1993, titled "The Quest For The Rainbow Country - Men and colours in South Africa in the Work of Nadine Gordimer". I have read almost all of her novels and essays, and was particularly struck by her Essay "Where Do Whites Fit In?". Strolling Johannesburg with that in mind made the experience more acute, I think. Again, I only really went to the African Crafts Market in Rosebank, packed with tourists, and the airport, ditto (that's for the crowded places), so I guess my experience is nowhere near conclusive. But still. I felt more white in Taiwan, Egypt or even Ecuador.

Oh and yes, this was Africa, I bargained.

How Intercultural Is Social Media?

notafish — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:17:00 +0200

Les médias sociaux, contrairement à ce que j'ai lu dans un billet de blog, permettent à mon avis de transcender les cultures, notamment nationales. Parce que les gens peuvent échanger sur des sujets précis, basés sur leurs intérêts communs, ils trouvent un point d'entrée qui permet une conversation autrement impossible et ce, quel que soit leur bagage culturel.

Via Twitter, I stumbled across this blogpost, talking about Social Media and Intercultural Communication. Interesting, I thought, as I believe "culture" is an essential component of Social Media to start with. I was left with a sense of non-achieved to some extent, as I think this blogpost does not really reflect how cultural boundaries are pushed away thanks to online communication.

For one, I am missing hard facts. The blogpost starts with a bunch of statements that don't seem to be backed by any kind of research. I'd love to see numbers, or proofs. Only one example is given later in the post about how the same people follow the same people. And frankly, it does not really convince me in drawing conclusions that:

When it comes to communicating with others online, most of us tend to stick to people within our own cultural group. For those of us in Western societies, it’s easier to communicate and connect with others who experience the same culture and language.

Mind you, I don't really have hard facts either, just my experience.

Let's start with language. It makes sense that the use of one language over another does limit the scope of online communication. I mean, I follow people who tweet in Chinese and well, although it happens to me to click on their links, I just don't understand what they are talking about. This said, I am amazed at the number of allegedly-non-English-speakers who react to my Facebook statuses. Most of them French, and from whom I would never have expected that they even read my statuses in English. In that regard, I find that the use of one language is not as limiting as I thought it would be. Then comes culture. And there, I just can't agree that social media is all about the same-same. Social Media is a way to broadly share thoughts, ideas and information. And I think that this sharing occurs, to a certain extent, regardless of culture. For the sake of clarity, we'll assume that culture here is taken in its broadest sense, ie. something like 'Western culture", shaped mainly by loose national borders and linguistic boundaries.

My followers, and the people i follow on identi.ca and Twitter, for example, can roughly be put into two categories. The first one would be my friends (in the real life sense of the term, not in the Facebook sense of the term), who follow me or whom I follow just because I am me and they are them. They don't really care what I share, as long as it comes from me, and I don't really care what they share, as long as it comes from them. We have a predisposition to being interested in the same things. The second category are the people I don't know, but who share the same interests as me. May it be all-things-wikipedia, or parenting, or the love of words, or geeky things such as Linux and KDE. These can be anyone. They could be indians, or Chinese, French or Americans, Kenyans or South Americans. We speak the same language(s) or we don't, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we have at least one thing, one interest, in common. Our national cultures are different, our social cultures (social backgrounds) are different, we may vote right, left, or center, love cheese or hate it. As a matter of fact, we could meet in real life and find nothing to talk about at all, nothing that binds us except that one interest, and even then, find each other boring, uninteresting or even plain annoying. In that regard, I believe social media actually brings people together who can be culturally extremely far away from each other.

Of course one could argue that these "interests" are a culture in and of themselves, but that's the reason I restricted the definition of culture above, because that's how I understood it was defined in the blogpost I quoted. What I find is that social media, because it brings some kind of focus, actually allows people with very different cultural sensitivities to find a connection, and allows for conversations between people which would, without this one entry point, not take place at all.

Of Language and Thought: Gender Awareness

notafish — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:08:00 +0200

Partant d'un article du New York Times sur la question essentielle de savoir si la langue que nous parlons décide de nos pensées, quelques considérations sur la langue en général et en particulier l'utilisation de différents genres pour les mêmes choses, notamment en français et allemand.

In an article titled "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?", Guy Deutscher tackles how our mother tongue may or may not shape our thoughts. The state of research as he presents it shows how language affect our relation to the world. Deutscher speaks about gender, space, color and even reality and how those are affected by the language we speak. The article is highly interesting, you should read it. As I have already written about in other posts on this blog, the subject is one that I am constantly thinking about.

In my experience, the most mysterious thing about how language affects the way we think still resides in the use of gender. Deutscher gives extensive examples of how languages differ in how they affect a gender to things. I speak at least three languages which have a completely different approach to gender.

French has two genders for things: masculine and feminine. German has three: masculine, feminine and neutral. English has one: neutral. How do you reconcile all of this in the way you look a the world? As far as I am concerned, learning English wasn't too much of a problem. Neutral does not exist in French, so having to say "it" for everything didn't really bother me. I kept thinking the differences in gender while speaking the "it". The moon is feminine, the sun is masculine, both ofthem can be referred as "it", and basta. But German introduced a whole new way of looking at things. What happens is that many words are of the opposite gender. The sun is a she and the moon a he, which is extremely confusing. And then comes neutral, which in the end, does not really make sense to me. I could understand it in English because it is used across the spectrum, but in German, the neutral seems to be totally random. I mean, a "young girl" (Mädchen) is neutral, go figure.

My way of dealing with this is interesting. There are words for which I don't care. A table is feminine in French, masculine in German, but frankly, that does not keep me awake at night. However, there are some other words I really have trouble with. Sun and moon are of those. But things like the world (feminine in German, masculine in French), or even worse, a letter (feminine in French, masculine in German) I just can't grasp. Or rather, I can't imagine them having another gender than the French one (mother tongue). I realize that with time that I simply put gender aside in German when it clashes too much with my conceptual world in French. This means that when I talk about a letter (der Brief) in German, I do use the masculine, but in my head, it's still a "she".

What I find fascinating today is looking at my daughter growing up learning both French and German at the same time. Her use of gender for things is still a bit off, but I suppose her grasp of the feminity or masculinity of things will be radically different from mine or that of her father, since she'll have learned both at the same time and without one or the other taking prevalence (or will they?). I am curious whether for her, gender for things, in the end, will have the same meaning. Will it be a she-moon? a he-sun? Both or neither? I can't wait for her to be old enough to actually answer this question.

Why the Accent Is so Important

notafish — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:14:00 +0200

Où la pub p)our une application iPhone sur le site spotify fait du multitâche une histoire un peu sale, faute d'accent.

You may know, or may not know, that we just had a son. He's now almost 7 weeks old and we took him to Wikimania in Poland. For that purpose, we had a passport made. You may remember, or may not remember, that passport making in the family is quite an adventure.

Well, our son got his double hyphen alright, but they forgot his accent. Well, they forgot mine, really, since the accent is on my name. Not a tragedy, especially since the German passport has the last name written in capital letters, so people tend to forget accents on those anyway (not the WIkipedians, I know). Still, I would have liked him to have an accent, but we needed to go to Poland, so I decided to keep the passport like this.

But sometimes, forgetting the accent can lead to interesting interpretations. Proof, the banner on the spotify website, for an iPhone app. The banner reads "Multitache sur votre iPhone". It should read "Multitâche sur votre iPhone" (see the little accent circonflexe - hat- on the a?). The difference is huge. As it is, it advocates stains on yuor iPhone. Well, maybe that's the intended meaning, but I don't think so.

Multitache=multistain (tache= a stain, a dirty spot)
Multitâche=multitask (tâche= a task)

Moral of the story, if you don't want to end up dirty, you might want to pay attention to the accent.

Tell Me How You Eat I Will Tell You Who You Are

notafish — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:51:00 +0200

J'ai toujours trouvé intéressant d'observer comment les gens se tiennent à table dans les différents pays. Lorsqu'on se trouve à table dans un pays dont on ne connaît pas les manières, il est toujours difficile de savoir si ce qui relève du savoir-vivre chez soi ne sera pas interprété comme une action hautement impolie ailleurs. Mais peut-être est-ce seulement mon éducation française qui joue...

I just read an extremely interesting blogpost on a parallel drawn between how Americans and Japanese dine and what this means in the workplace. The whole table manners thing has been an interest of mine for a while now. Having lived in several countries, you realize how much of a difference there can be just in the way you eat. It all starts with how the meal is structured. When does the salad come, at the beginning of the meal? Or at the end? Is it served in a big bowl or rather in individual bowls? What about the cheese? Is it served in an individual plate? On a big plate in the center of the table? Not at all?

You then need to pay attention to the table manners proper. Do you put your bread on the table? Or on the plate? Is there salt on the table? If not, am I allowed to ask for it? Or is it considered impolite to do so (the idea being that asking for salt would actually demean the culinary abilities of your host). Hands on the table, or on your lap? Do you wait to be served? Or do you serve yourself? Do you eat with your fork or with your fingers? When you're finished, do you cross your fork and knife or do you put them parallel to each other? Hardly existential questions, you'll tell me, but questions nonetheless, which answers might make you the best or the worst educated of people.

What I find most interesting in this is that something that might be perfectly polite in a country, will be considered completely rude in another, which makes for difficult and sometimes painful times. I've always hated it, when in a country of which I don't master the table manners, to have the host tell me "go ahead", because I never know what first step I should be taking and I am always scared of doing the wrong thing. Maybe it's just because I'm French and the French do care about these things...

Faute de grammaire, on mange de la dessert

notafish — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:55:00 +0200

It is probably a marketing trick to be using French sounding names in countries where French is not spoken. Especially for food. The "Cuisine flair, I suppose". But what really really bothers me, is when marketing does not check its grammar and ends up using the wrong gender for a word, or making a pathetic spelling and grammar mistake. Two examples in Germany, where the gender of "dessert" has been changed, or where a mousse-like dessert is called Crème Composé when it should be Crème ComposéE.

J'ai toujours eu l'impression, à tort ou à raison, que le français jouissait d'une place particulière en Allemagne. Pas seulement en Allemagne d'ailleurs, un peu partout dans le monde. Du coup, il est utilisé dans un peu tous les domaines. Et plus particulièrement dans celui de la cuisine et de la nourriture. J'imagine que la cuisine française donne une image plutôt positive d'elle même et que donc par extension, utiliser le français quand on parle de nourriture permet de donner une image positive d'un produit.

Depuis quelques mois, la télévision allemande fait de la pub pour un dessert, dont le nom est "La Dessert". Et je dois avouer que cette grossière erreur de grammaire me hérisse le poil. Bien sûr, on peut imaginer que l'erreur n'en est pas une, mais plutôt un néologisme bidon destiné à permettre le dépôt de la marque. Je me dis que si ce "néologisme" avait été pensé par une marque française, je trouverais peut-être cela très spirituel. Mais du fait que ce produit soit exclusivement allemand, je ne peux m'empêcher de penser que les marketeux ont tout simplement mal fait leur boulot et qu'en voulant faire "français", ils ont sorti ce nom de leur chapeau sans penser plus avant.

Voilà pourtant que la semaine dernière, en faisant mes courses, je trouve dans les rayons de mon supermarché un nouveau produit (marque du distributeur, en l'occurrence REWE, le Leclerc du coin, genre) qui me fait à nouveau bondir. La crème composé (sic), si elle est fort bonne, me fait mal à l'oeil et à la grammaire. Il lui manque un "e" salutaire, que ma bonne âme de française qui corrigeait à l'école les dictées de ses copains a du mal à digérer (la crème elle, était bonne). Cela s'écrit "Crème composéE", bande de mauvais !

Je suppose qu'il y a des milliers d'exemples de grammaire hachée et torturée pour les besoins du marketing, mais ceux-là sont dans mon quotidien et ils m'énervent.

Animals Too Speak Foreign Languages

notafish — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:17:00 +0200

Les onomatopées utilisées pour les cris d'animaux sont très différentes d'une langue à l'autre. Entre le "cocorico" français, le "cocka doodle doo" anglais et le kikiriki français, je me demande comment notre fille va apprendre à faire parler les animaux.

Seriously. They do. There is something fantastic about bringing up a child in two languages, it is that you discover things about your own languages that you never really thought about.

When a child learns to speak, one of the first thing you do, is teach them the noises that animals make. I guess all parents have gone through this ordeal of making themselves ridiculous while imitating a dog, a cow or God knows what animal, instead of plainly saying "this is a dog", you'll go "this is a dog, wow wow".

Well, here comes the problem. As stated in this blogpost, German animals make different noises than English speaking ones. And to top it all, French ones say things differently as well. So how does a child make the difference? I mean, which are the true animal languages? Take the rooster for example. It goes Cocka doodle doo in English, Kikiriki in German, and Cocorico in French. Mind you, seeing that the rooster is one of the French national symbols (granted, due to a funny etymology history), I'm tempted to say that we (the French) know better what it really says^[1] Same for the frog (we are the ones eating frog legs, after all), which goes ribbit in English, kwock in German and coââ - coââ in French. Frankly, the English speaking frogs are strange, and I am pretty sure they can't understand the French or German ones, which seem to speak neighbour languages.

All in all, I find it interesting that such things as onomatopea are so different from one language to another. You'd think that with a few quirks, due to existing sounds in one or the other languages, animal talk would be transcribed in approaching ways. After all, it is just a matter of listening and reproducing. But no, that's not the way it works. I'm wondering how our daughter will handle those differences. Maybe her rooster will say something like Cocoriki?

Notes

[1] Image to prove my point: Coq gaulois from the statue of the Girondins, Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux © Jean-Marie DAVID Dinkley, CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Vorauseilender Gehorsam

notafish — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:00 +0200

While reading one of the blogs I follow from afar on the "intercultural" scene, I stumbled upon the concet of "vorauseilender Gehorsam" (obedience before the order), an interesting concept which the commenter on the blog thought could be an explanation for the rise in English words within other languages. The idea being that people obey soe "unknown boss" that expects them to strew their conversations with English words to be fashionable, because it is the thing to do.

Ne crisez pas, ce billet est en français, seul le titre est en allemand. Je me baladais sur l'un des blogs "interculturels" que je lis de temps en temps (je suis une piètre lectrice de blogs, mais c'est une autre histoire) et suis tombée sur ce billet qui fait écho à mes billets précédents sur la difficulté (ou le bonheur) de parler plusieurs langues.

Le phénomène de Vorausleidender Gehorsam (obéissance avant l'ordre), tel qu'expliqué par Matthias sur le billet de Caroline est un concept que je ne connaissais pas et que je trouve particulièrement intéressant. Je ne suis pas certaine qu'il s'applique à l'exemple donné par Caroline, qui me semble plutôt relever du "which language says it best". En l'occurrence, le contexte (conversation avec un américain) appelle le mot le plus proche du sens que l'on veut dire, facilité par le fait que l'on sait que la personne à qui l'on parle comprendra ce mot de toutes façons. Il suffit d'écouter les conversations de personnes à la langue maternelle commune mais vivant dans un pays étranger pour voir se profiler nombre des ces "localisations" sauvages. Combien de fois ai-je parlé du Finanzamt à un français d'Allemagne, parce que le Trésor Public est un concept franco-français...

En revanche, cette idée de "vorauseilender Gehorsam" me paraît intéressante pour expliquer la "montée" des mots anglais dans les autres langues. On peut imaginer que le "chef" désincarné dans le contexte actuel est le phénomène de mode. Il est de bon ton de truffer son vocabulaire de mots anglais, pour montrer qu'on est "in" (à la page !), même si on les utilise parfois à tort et à travers. Les allemands sont très forts pour ça, entre le Handy (cell phone) et le Beamer (projector) qui s'ils ont des consonnances anglophones, ne sont pas de vrais mots de la langue anglaise. Je me suis surprise parlant d'un beamer à des anglophones qui me regardaient dun air étrange. Bref, que ce soit la mode, le net ou tout autre "chef" qui nous pousse à mélanger les langues et les genres, je trouve ce concept développé par Matthias très intéressant.

Job Hunting: How Culturally Unconventional Can You Be?

notafish — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:51:00 +0200

La façon de répondre à une annonce pour un travail, si elle comporte dans plusieurs pays des composantes équivalentes (la lettre de motivation, le CV), comporte aussi des éléments spécifiques à la culture et au pays. Pourtant, je me dis que si je devais répondre à une annonce en Allemagne, je serai bien en peine de faire une candidature "dans les règles". Je crois, du coup, que je tenterai de répondre en étant calire sur le fait que mon parcours international m'empêche d'être conventionnelle dans ma candidature...

I've always wondered if I could find a job in Germany. Not so much because of my competence or lack thereof, but rather about whether I could, or couldn't, conform to the German way of answering a job ad.

Answering a job ad, in the countries where I've looked at it (mainly US, Germany and France) has a rather similar structure. Cover letter and CV are the core components. Basically, these are a letter stating why you're the best person for the job and a list of the positions you've occupied in the past X years.

However, there are rather important cultural differences to the way you do it. Not to mention that the recrudescence of social networks and other online tools needs to be thrown into the bargain, as it has somewhat changed the way of doing things.

The last time I applied for a job in a somewhat conventional way was probably about 6 years ago, in France. Which probably is a completely outdated way of doing it. I had the name of someone to send my application to, sent a cover letter, my CV and went on to an interview. Pretty simple and straightforward.

Here in Germany, I've watched with interest as my man was looking for a job, and how he was going about it. The "conventional" way of doing it in Germany is, apart from the CV and cover letter, to join to your application what the Germans call "Zeugnisse". The way I understood them, "Zeugnisse" are recommendations, of sorts. but not exactly. They are letters from the people you worked for, which reformulate the position you've occupied and tell how good you were in it. The further back you can go, the better. Which, for someone with a varied career, might amount to a lot of paper.

In the US, as I understand it, recommendations can be from virtually anyone. Your bosses of course, your colleagues, but also your friends (the more titles they can boast of the better) and why not, your family. Something that I believe is completely inconcievable in Germany. You probably would never ask a friend to write a Zeugnis for you.

In France, recommendations are (were?) definitely not the norm. While the "anglo-saxon" application has certainly taken on in the past few years, the diplomas you can align and the great names you can drop within your CV offer a much better chance of being noticed than having your Harvard-friend write a recommendation for you.

So the question is, how would I apply to a job here in Germany? I could of course go and read a whole load of online resources ^[1]about how to Zeugnisse should be written, or how to write your cover letter, and even how to organize your CV. But I'm thinking it would be conforming to something I am not, having worked in different countries, different fields and many different companies, for so many different customers. I'm thinking that in this ever changing and challenging global work market, being yourself, even if that means being culturally unconventional, is probably a better way to go about it. I probably couldn't produce many Zeugnisse (who knows what my boss from 10 years ago in France has become in 10 years?), but I can detail what I did and when, and even better, I can actually reflect on what I have done and what it has brought me for my job today. I would even say that being French, while I am sure that I am the right person for the job, I am not sure that the documents I provide are those that are expected, but that I am open to providing more information if needed. In short, I would try and be myself, rather than try and fit in a predefined frame.

I guess I have faith in recruiters, if they're looking for someone to do a job, they're not looking for anyone that can do that job and can lay it out on paper, but rather for someone who can reflect and think on what their experience is bringing to the table.

And frankly, in a world where a (the best) job can be had ^[2] with such applications, I do think there is potential for unconventional.

What's your experience with international applications?

Notes

[1] Those resources were chosen with a quick google search, I can't say anything about whether they're good or bad

[2] More info on The Best Job in The World in this BBC article

Which Language Says it Best?

notafish — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:14:00 +0200

Quand on apprend une langue étrangère dans le pays où elle est parlée, on apprend souvent des mots dans leur contexte étranger. Du coup, il devient extrêmement difficile de les traduire dans sa langue maternelle. C'est aussi le cas dans l'autre sens, de sa langue maternelle vers la langue étrangère. Certains mots n'ont simplement pas de traduction qui revête toutes les nuances d'un mot dans une autre langue. Quelques exemples.

A few days ago, I wrote about the extended meaning of words, and how some words in a language we learn take on a wider meaning because we have an approaching word in our own language. This made me think about the words that one learns in a foreign language which just don't have a satisfying translation.

Speaking another language is a difficult endeavour, but it is also a very rewarding one. However, while learning the language in the country it is spoken is probably the best way to learn it, rather than at school, it brings on whole new set of challenges in speaking your mother tongue.

There is a whole context to learning a new word, which we probably forget because we were too young when we learned words, or too engrossed in learning to remember the circumstances in which we learned them. My theory goes though, that you don't know a word fully until you have tried to translate it.

How many times have I come across words that just "say it best" in another language than the one I am speaking at the time?

Let me try a few examples.

Wilderness. Wilderness is a word I learned at the foot of the rockies, in the middle of nowhere. In the wilderness. But when I came back to France and had to translate it, I just couldn't. There is so much to the word that it takes at least a full French sentence to even come close to it. The wild, the fauna, the flora, the outdoors, what do I know. It's a concept that simply does not really exist in French. I noticed that for example, the translation of Jack London's White Fang in French used the Wild in English, because there is simply no French word that carries the same meaning.

Mensch. Mensch is a German word which means something like human being. But not really. Or rather, more than that. It's a human being which carries the whole of Humanity (notice the capital H) with it. A concept that neither French nor English really have.

N'importe quoi. N'importe quoi means "anything", but it also means "silly things" or "silly words". N'importe quoi is used as an interjection in French, which would mean something like 'nonsense". But it's also used in conjunction with the verb 'make'. you can "make n'importe quoi" but you can't make nonsense. Again, untranslatable.

I find it absolutely fantastic to be able to have an array of vocabulary that goes beyond one's mother tongue. It is also highly frustrating, to know of words, and the concept behind them, and not be able to translate them accurately in the language you are speaking at a moment M. It's a bit like looking at the world with a magnifying glass and seeing things which you can't show other people because you can't give them that magnifying glass.

There are probably thousands of other examples, which I simply can't think of right now, but I'll try to keep a list. I'd be interested to hear what words you have stumbled upon and which you have not been able to translate in one or the other language you speak.

I Am More French Here Than in France

notafish — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:15:00 +0200

Étonnamment, je me sens plus française à l'étranger que lorsque je suis en France. Un sentiment difficile à décrire, parce qu'il est fait de nombreuses choses quelque peu triviales, autant que de choses fondamentales, mais que je ne sais pas décrypter de façon objective.

While skimming through it again, this note in Nancy Adler's book hit me with a few thoughts. Executives are more national abroad than they would be at home.

I am always wondering what it is to be "French", really. What does it mean? What do people think when they realize that I am French? But most importantly, what does it mean to me to be French? I've asked myself this question many a times, and I have never really come up with a satisfying answer.

The first time I asked myself this question was in the US, when I left home to study for two years in an international environment. I remember extending my hand in the first few days, presenting myself "Hi, I'm Delphine, from France". This "from France" turned out to be the most qualifying thing I could say about myself. Mind you, all of us were doing it, adding our country of origin to our name, but I realized that where the first name really does not tell much about a person, the fact that they're "from a country" tells a lot more.

In that international environment, I started thinking about what it was to be French. And this has followed me through my international perigrinations. I realize that being French is really something I am actually a little proud of, but... only when I am abroad. In the end, one's nationality is somehow defined in a negative way (more in the photography sense of the word), against things that are different from what they are "at home". There is the language, of course, which probably taints my use of other languages (I tend to make never-ending sentences in English and use too many parentheses, a typical French thing), but there is more.

I could say that there is the food, and the wine. It's kind of trivial, I guess, but it's very true. I make a point of cooking "à la française" in my German home, for example. But that really isn't it. There are both so many things that make me feel French, and so little. The whole church saga made me realize how anchored in me the separation between spiritual and administrative was, for example. Or the difficulty I have using "du" (the informal "you' in German), because it exists in French too but social codes are very different about when you can use it in France and Germany.

But these are all things that I hardly think about when I'm in France. Actually, I tend to be rather un-French when in France. On the contrary to many French people, I speak several languages or I defend the US for example.

The thing is, I believe that my being French is made of many many little trivail things, as well as of many fundamental values, thoughts and behaviours. I just don't know how to list them objectively.

One thing is sure, I am more French here in Germany, than I have ever been in France. But please, don't ask me why. Maybe just because I am not German?

Pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères

notafish — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:54:00 +0200

A few months after writing my blog post Why The French Don't Speak Any Other Language, I read Jean-Benoît's Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent. Jean-Benoît Nadeau is French Canadian and lived two years in France to study the French. And he seemed to come to a conclusion similar to mine concerning why the French don't speak any other language, ie. that the mastery of the language is a very important thing for the French and unless they speak a foreign language perfectly, they just won't speak.

Il y a de cela quelques mois, j'ai commis un billet tentant d'expliquer pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères. Ma théorie est que le français est une langue qui supporte difficilement d'être mal parlée, parce qu'elle en devient difficile à comprendre.

Les français ont une réputation qui les précède de gens ne sachant pas parler les langues étrangères et surtout pas l'anglais. Et ce malgré un système scolaire qui met l'accent sur les langues étrangères dès la sixième (que l'on atteint à environ 11-12 ans) et pendant au moins cinq années si l'on passe son bac. Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai lu l'ouvrage de Jean-Benoît Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent, qui relate ses deux années en France. Il y aborde rapidement la question du blinguisme et le fait en ces termes :

J'ai ma petite théorie pour expliquer pourquoi on dit que les Français sont moins bilingues que les autres Européens. D'abord, je crois que c'est faux : je suis même convaincu que les Français ont toujours été aussi bilingues que les autres. Problème : le niveau de bilinguisme d'un peuple ne se mesure pas, objectivement. Toutes les études ne peuvent mesurer que ce que les gens pensent d'eux-mêmes. À la question : "Parlez-vous une autre langue ?" un Français aura tendance à répondre non, sauf s'il la parle bien, tout simplement parce que la maîtrise parfaite de la langue est fondamentale pour lui.^[1]

Je suis évidemment d'accord avec cette analyse. Je pense que les Français ont tout simplement un complexe d'infériorité lorsqu'il s'agit de parler une langue étrangère, notamment parce que dans la société française, la maîtrise de la langue (française) est un signe de distinction sociale et d'éucation. Du coup, le Français parlant mal une langue étrangère (ou pensant qu'il la parle mal), aura tendance à ne pas s'aventurer hors de la langue qu'il maîtrise.

En tant que Française parlant tous les jours une langue étrangère, c'est un état d'esprit que je connais bien. Bien que ma maîtrise de l'allemand soit bonne, elle est loin d'être parfaite et cela donne lieu à de nombreuses frustrations, probablement exacerbées par le fait que je suis française.

Notes

[1] Les Français aussi ont un accent, Jean-Benoît Nadeau, Petite Bibliothèque Payot, p. 243

The Extended Meanings of Words

notafish — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:43:00 +0200

Les mots sont parfois plus parlants dans une langue que dans une autre et disent plus que leur simple définition. Mais ceci est souvent dû au fait que l'on ne peut apprendre une langue sans teinter certains mots avec ceux que l'on connaît déjà. Certains mots prennent ainsi dans notre esprit un sens élargi par rapport à leur défnition de base. Le mot embarazada en espagnol évoque l'embarras pour un français, alors qu'il veut dire "être enceinte", probablement sans aucune arrière pensée. De même le mot groß en allemand, qui veut dire grand mais que j'utilise rarement parce que j'ai toujours l'impression de qualifier quelqu'un de gros alors qu'il est simplement grand.

I was in Bordeaux a week ago, talking with a friend of mine, who loves lists. She makes lists about different funny things, but one that struck me, and which I might actually start on my own, was her list of words that "fit" in a language, better than in another, or that, on the contrary, just don't fit at all. She speaks Italian, Spanish, English and French (she's a native French speaker) and so we toyed with a few words and argued about them.

She started with a word I didn't know, the word for pollution in Italian. The word is inquinamento. To her, that word was much stronger than the French (or English for that matter) pollution. It has this kind of sticky ring to it, which evokes something crawling under your skin. I looked up the etymology of it, which refers to "stink" (puzzare) and "putrefaction" (putrefazione) in its indo-European roots. I must say that although I do not fully grasp the word, I can relate to the feeling by hearing it.

We then went on to the Spanish for pregnant, which is embarazada. I have to say that this is one of the most common faux-amis (false friends) for French speakers (I guess it works in English too). You find yourself embarrassed and end up ... pregnant, by using the wrong words. My friend thought the use of the word could be seen as a good illustration of women's condition in society, ie. they feel embarrassed (not at ease) because they're pregnant. Looking up the etymology brings interesting things. The Spanish word as well as the French word ''embarrasser'' seem to be derived from the same root, but have evolved differently. Embarazo in Spanish is really pregnancy, that's all. The interesting thing here is that one language actually taints the other, I suppose that Spanish speakers don't ever think of embarrassment when they use the word embarazada.

I found this to be the most interesting example. Because we speak another language, which may or may not share roots with the language we learn, some words simply take on much more (or many more) meaning(s) than they really have. Looking back, I realise it is simply impossible not to taint some of the words with those you already know. Which sometimes means that you have trouble using a perfectly harmless word because it just rings different bells in your own language. One good example in my everyday life is the word groß (pronounced gross and which means tall). In French, gros means fat. So it's always really strange for me to tell someone they are tall, because I always have second thoughts about the fact that I might just have called them fat. I guess that works in English too... Calling someone gross is not exactly very nice!

Quand la pub joue avec les stéréotypes culturels

notafish — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:15:00 +0200

I found it funny to find an ad in the last Géo issue, which appealed to the stereotypes that French people have about Americans and Germans. An intercultural ad if there was ever any. The ad is for an American-style refrigerator and the tagline reads "tall, cold and ecologist. No doubt, this American is German".

Cet après-midi, en buvant mon café, j'ai feuilleté le dernier numéro de Géo sur l'Islande. Comme souvent quand je lis un magazine, je me suis arrêtée sur certaines pubs et notamment sur une publicité pour un réfrigérateur Bosch. Je suppose que ce sont les mots "américain" et "allemand" qui ont attiré mon attention.

J'ai parlé ailleurs des stéréotypes et de l'intérêt qu'il y avait à en avoir. Cette pub fait appel, selon moi, à plusieurs stéréotypes, impliquant trois nationalités.

D'abord, il faut garder à l'esprit que la pub s'adresse à un public francophone (peut-être même français). La référence aux allemands et aux américains est donc par défaut teintée culturellement.

Mon interprétation : Pour le français, le stéréotype de l'allemand est souvent celui d'une personne de grande taille, d'abord plutôt froid et souvent porté sur l'écologie. Pour le même français, le stéréotype de l'américain est aussi celui d'une personne de grande taille (tout est démesuré aux États-Unis), d'un abord plutôt chaleureux mais assez peu intéressé par tout ce qui touche à l'environnement. On trouve donc dans le slogan trois stéréotypes, l'un commun aux deux pays et deux autres contraires dans les deux pays.

Ce que je trouve très fort ici, c'est l'équilibre entre l'utilisation des stéréoptypes positifs et négatifs. Ni l'allemand, ni l'américain ne sont dépeints de façon toute négative ou toute positive. On a :

grand = stéréotype commun
froid=stéréotype négatif pour une personne (ici l'allemand), mais bon pour un réfrigérateur
son contraire chaleureux=stéréotype positif suggéré pour l'américain
et enfin écolo=stéréotype ni vraiment positif, ni vraiment négatif, puisque "écolo" est teinté politiquement et culturellement et peut avoir, suivant l'interprétation qu'on en fait, une connotation positive (respectueux de l'environnement) ou plus négative (écolo militant qui casse des McDo).

Je ne sais pas si cette pub me ferait acheter un réfrigérateur, mais culturellement, je la trouve extrêmement bien faite.

Peau neuve

notafish — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:08:00 +0200

This post exists also in English :)

Bon, voilà enfin un billet en français, qui est le jumeau, ou presque, du précédent en anglais. Aujourd'hui est à marquer d'une pierre blanche, puisque c'est le jour où d'une part, ce blog fait peau neuve, grâce à ma copine Kozlika qui a développé le beau thème qui habille maintenant ce blog.

L'un des changements majeurs qu'apporte ce thème est la possibilité qu'il me donne, un peu comme le fait Stephanie sur son blog , de mettre pour chaque billet un résumé en anglais (ou en français, selon la langue d'origine du billet). Du coup, je vais pouvoir écrire en français et en anglais et essayer non pas de traduire (je ne sais pas faire) mais au moins de partager le contenu de mes billets dans les deux langues. Bien que la façon dont nous faisions ça ici ne soit pas encore la meilleure, elle a le mérite d'exister.

Mais le plus important est que je trouve ce thème fabuleux, il est beau et va bien à mon blog. J'espère qu'il vous plaira aussi.

New skin

notafish — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:07:00 +0200

Pour une fois, ce billet va être écrit en français aussi :)

This is going to be the only post I am ever going write again in French, because it marks quite a change in this blog. My friend Kozlika worked on a (beautiful) new theme for this blog, which you now can see if you come by.

One of the major improvements of this theme is that it will allow, along the lines of what Stephanie does on her blog, for a French (or English, depending on the post) summary of the post I write. While the way we've done it here is not yet the best way, it actually serves its purpose for now.

I am really happy with this new theme, I find it simply beautiful and fitting. I hope you enjoy it too.

Choosing a Name: The Last Name

notafish — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:40:00 +0100

Choisir un nom de famille pour son enfant. Il fut un temps où la chose était plutôt simple, mais la loi et les mouvements migratoires font de ce qui pourrait être une aventure simple un parcours du combattant. Entre le double nom et les doubles tirets, donner un nom de famille à notre fille aura été une vraie gageure.

Now, the first part of this was a long time ago. It was about the First Name. Here comes the story of the Last Name, prompted by the fact that I got my daughter's German passport a few weeks ago.

You'd think that having chosen the first name, we'd be done. But no. Even the last name is a culturally tainted venture, which bears in itself much more trouble than one would think, and not only cultural trouble.

Most of our societies are rather patriarcal. You get the name of your father. Even the ones that sometimes think themselves much more open and allow women to keep their names really are patriarchal. Take Portugal, which collates both the father's and the mother's name in a unique new name. This ends up in children having different names from that of their parents. Which isn't understood by French authorities, at least a few years back, who had no idea how to take care of my French cousin marrying a Portuguese man and which name was really his (different from both of his parents).

In Germany, you're only allowed to give the name of the father or the name of the mother. Not both. Fortunately, Germany recognizes foreign laws when it comes to names. In France, the law changed with a text passed in 2002 (that came into force in 2005) which basically opens a whole new realm of possibilities for last name transmission. Following French law, you can now give to your children either your name, that of your partner, or both together (in both the order you--him or him--you). The catch is the double hyphen that comes into play. Yes, you read that well, a double hyphen.

Now, it seems that French law requires this double hyphen ^[1] if both parents' names are chosen. It will allow the kid to drop one or the other name when they marry or have kids (for more information, see here, in French).

When we declared our daughter, we asked for the double hyphen. No need to say that the German authorities were a little puzzled about this rather freaky way of writing a name (an accent on my last name was already quite a challenge). But the German Ministry of the Interior had issued a text about that French specificity, which allowed us to get that straightened out. Our daughter's birth certificate displays the double-hyphen. And so does her German passport, which is quite a victory, since when I went to fill out the papers for her to have a passport, the woman at the desk did make it very clear that although she would try and see what she could do concerning my accent (on which I was very set), there was no way she could enter a double-hyphen in the system. We have indeed signed a disclaimer when we registered our kid that said we were aware of the fact that this funky double-hyphen might not be reproduced on official papers so I was prepared. And amazed when I saw that the passport bore both hyphens.

I am kind of looking forward how this name pattern plays out in the future. I am happy to have been able to give my name to my daughter, I am not sure she'll find that so cool when it comes to filling out administrative papers... Time will tell.

Notes

[1] I have come across a quick note which seems to say that this is not the case anymore... go figure. [edit] see here this relatively short ticker which confirms this, and this article pointed out by keriluamox in the comments