#Microblog Mondays 228: Excitement
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On the heels of the “Finnish don’t do small talk” article comes another one summing up an entire country in a single statement: The French don’t show excitement. I’m going to call bullshit on this one, BBC, because the twins have a fantastic French teacher who is dynamic and passionate.
When she is speaking about something that excites her, you can see — clearly — that she is excited. She makes the kids excited about the language. They come home speaking about French culture just as often as they come home speaking in French. I would even go so far as to describe her as exuberant. Ebullient. She fizzes with happiness for France and teaching French.
So while you may not be able to express this in French doesn’t mean that excitement does not exist in France. After all, we have dozens of types of snow, even though English only has one word for snow, unlike the Inuit’s 50+.
I’m thinking the BBC may be stretching with this series.
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9 comments
This is generalization and for sure doesn’t work all the time. So you are right – BBC is stretching this topic.
I haven’t seen or read about the BBC piece but I’m thinking there’s a lot more to it and the title is just an attention-getter. I know people attend from everywhere, but I watch the French Open every year and people get pretty excited during the matches.
Well…having grown up with a French father and grandfather, I’d say that the article probably overshoots by a bit and has too many generalizations. Definitely there’s some cultural differences between how the French people in my life and most Americans express excitement, but the idea that the French don’t show excitement is a bit overblown.
Ha! I agree with Lori. This has to be a sensationalist title. That said, I grew up learning Spanish, but French would be an amazing language to learn.
Seems like click bait to me! I have friends who are French and they get excited about things all the time. Especially our politics in the states. Ha.
I’m very sensitive to any sort of generalization like that because I fear what other countries assume about “all Americans” right now. Yikes.
I also had a spectacular French teacher who got VERY excited about his passions.
Adding my vote for click-bait! Because I’ve witnessed first hand how excited French people can get (even if they’d like to pretend otherwise).
Having read the article, it seems to me to be less of an issue between languages (as stressed by the article – referring to English all the time but from a very American perspective), but cultures. Because Americans seem over the top to Kiwis too. And perhaps to Brits, Australians etc. We say something was “not bad” meaning that we quite liked it. It feels artificial to be overly effusive. Verging on boastful.
Though I can’t comment on how the French would see this.
I call bull merde!