Tag: Cultural Oddities View All Tags

Learn to Be As Rude As the French

January 9, 2007 at 9:45 AM | 0 Comments


So the French have this reputation about not wanting to speak to tourists, unless you happen to speak perfect French. Whether or not this is true is now irrelevant because the Paris Tourist Board has given up on fronting friendliness and come up with a compromise. Launched with the Cop the Parisian Attitude website, this new campaign is designed to tell the visitor how to really communicate with Parisians - for example, by learning the Gallic shrug:

1) Stick out your lower lip, 2) Raise your eyebrows and shoulders simultaneously. Use it to deny knowledge, agreement or responsibility.
You can also learn the French body language for "I'm fed up, let's go," "bad luck" and the special Parisian "shut up." If you're mature enough, there are even a set of "red card" gestures to learn. Sounds a whole lot easier than swotting over a French grammar textbook before your next trip. Most likely a lot more useful, too.

[Photo: malias]

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· Tourists Given Guide to French Rudeness [Australian]

Punk Rockers in the UK, They Won't Notice Anyway

August 30, 2006 at 9:40 AM | 0 Comments



We found the site This is Broken yesterday (via TMN) and we've been entertaining ourselves with it ever since. Essentially, it's a catalogue of broken things; hotel maps which are so confusing that you will almost certainly perish in a hotel fire if you stop and try to read them; elevator buttons that don't correspond with floors, and so forth. This one is from a traffic light in Hammersmith, London. For Brits, apparently these lights are easier to understand, since they are schooled in driving on the other side of the road. For Americans, they cause a minor brain explosion. Better to walk, we say.