Taking the French out of Paris

Almost two weeks ago now, I was sitting in a café in Paris drinking a coffee and reading a copy of Le Monde, which is one of the more well-respected French newspapers. I had ordered the coffee in French, and as the server set it in front of me he peered over my shoulder to read the headlines of the newspaper I was reading. When I was done with the coffee, I asked for “l’addition,” or the bill, and was told promptly that, “The coffee is 1e20, ma’am.”

I blinked at the server a few times, said “Merci” coldly, and stalked out of the café. I was furious. I clearly speak French; he had heard me. I clearly read French; he had seen me. I’m in France to speak French, and to improve it. So why in the world had he switched to English in the last moments of a trivial, first-year-French conversation?

No matter how many Parisians I told about this incident – my host mom, my classmates, the “stagières” or interns that work for CUPA – I always got the same reaction: “It’s because they want to practice their English, not because they think that you can’t speak French!” Which is all very well and good, and I can understand the temptation of using a foreigner as walking language practice; heck, if I worked at a Starbucks at home and I saw a French woman come in, I’d probably be tempted to tell her the price of her coffee in French, too. But, I would always reply snappily, I took the trouble of coming all the way here from the United States. If my French server really wants to improve his English that much, he ought to go to London – it’s only a two-hour train ride away.

This logic, which at first appeared impeccable to me, has begun to crumble under the force of further reflection and the force of some of the experiences I’ve had with fellow Americans in the past couple of days.

The church that I frequent in Paris is the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, an Episcopal cathedral. Every once in a while I go to the local French mass with my host parents, but as a protestant I can’t take communion in a Catholic church (or rather, I could, but it would shock my poor host parent’s conservative sensibilities), and the only protestant churches in Paris are English-speaking. I really like the American Episcopal cathedral that I go to; the parishioners are almost all American ex-pats, they’re very warm and welcoming, and now that I’ve been going for a couple of weeks, the church staff seem honestly happy to see me on Sunday mornings. The building itself is lovely, too – it’s only a block away from the Champs Elysées, is practically paneled in stained glass windows, and is big and old and echo-ey. In fact, both the building and the parish are over a century old, and date from roughly the 1890s. Which means that since the 1890s and probably a little before, there have been enough Episcopal Americans living in Paris to need not just their own church, but their own bishop.

Whoa.

Later that same week, I met up with an American friend for lunch, and she took me to a restaurant that I’d never been to before. It’s called “Breakfast in America,” located in the 4^th arondissement, and is essentially an American-style diner. It’s hugely popular not just with ex-pats and study abroad students, but also with Parisians. The traditional French breakfast consists of tea, toast, and jam, so consequently eating an American-style brunch is a semi-exotic Thing To Do on weekend mornings. This particular afternoon, the line to be seated was snaking out the door and down the road. This isn’t necessarily a bad sign in Paris: there isn’t enough space in most restaurants for there to be a waiting area, so even 5-10 minute waits often spill out onto the street. Furthermore, all the people ahead of us were in big groups, so there was a good chance that me and my friend would get seated before them, as soon as a two-seater table opened up.

Sure enough, we’d only been waiting maybe ten minutes or so when a waiter came out to collect us. “Vous êtes deux?” he verified. “Oui!” we said happily. “You’re American?” he asked us in the unmistakable twang of a native Midwesterner. “Yeah!” we responded. He nodded, and said, “Thank you for your patience ladies, please follow me.”

The people on either side of us were Parisians who probably speak English pretty well. But I could tell from the looks on their faces and from snippets of their conversation that they hadn’t understood a word of the last sentence that the server had said to us. Not because any of those English words are particularly difficult to understand, but because that entire exchange was completely culturally American. In Paris a server would never thank you for your patience; after all, if you hadn’t wanted to wait to eat at the restaurant, you wouldn’t have. The Parisians in that line probably felt like they had gotten pulled into Bizarre-o World, where suddenly the commerce and restaurant etiquette that they’d grown up with all their lives didn’t apply; we were on their home turf, but playing by our house rules. I think I can understand their feeling of surprise.

The last event that I’d like to relate to you all is similar to the one above. A friend of mine got a job working at a bakery-slash-coffee shop called the Sugarplum Cake Factory in the 5^th arondissement. It’s owned and run exclusively by Americans, and they end up employing a lot of study abroad students to man the espresso machine and cash register in the coffee shop. My friend told me that they had fantastic carrot cake, and since as far as I’m concerned even sub-par carrot cake warrants a taste, I stopped by on my way home from a little sight-seeing last Saturday. I was behind a young French man in line, who was having a bit of a disagreement with the girl behind the counter because he wanted to order a cup of coffee “sur place,” that is to drink in the restaurant, and she didn’t want to give it to him because the store was closing in two minutes (at this point I looked at my watch and realized it was 6:58. Yikes! I thought. I’d better order my carrot cake to go!).

Eventually the man agreed to get his coffee “à emporté,” or to go, gave the girl behind the counter a 5 euro bill to pay for what was probably a 3 euro coffee, and was submitted to the irritating realization that the girl didn’t have exact change to give back to him. He did eventually get the money he was due, but it was in a handful of 10- and 5-cent pieces. The man gave me a knowing look as I stepped up to the cash register, which is the Parisian invitation to strike up a conversation about what poor service a business has. I nodded at him sympathetically, but didn’t take the bait.

I knew that the girl behind the counter was American by her accent (no matter how good your accent gets, it will always come through when you are fighting with an angry Parisian), so after responding to her polite “Bonjour!” with a “Bonjour” of my own, I switched to English.

“Can I get a slice of your carrot cake to go please?” I asked. She looked relieved, either because it was the end of a long shift and she was happy to have an American customer, or because she was happy that I had ordered it to go. “I’ll come back and try your coffee some other time, when you’re not closing in 2 minutes,” I added.

She laughed at that, still looking a little relieved, and told me, “It’s 4e40, but it would be great if you could pay in exact change.”

“I think I have just under that in exact change, probably 4e20 in coins, but it’s all in 10- and 20-cent pieces,” I told her apologetically. “Or I have a five.”

“Honestly,” she said tiredly, “At this point I’d rather have the coins.” So we spent forty seconds or so counting out the contents of my change purse. In the end, we got the 4e40, but the last 20 cents was in 5-cent pieces.

At this point, I looked back up at the Parisian man who was still waiting for his espresso, and saw that same funny look of non-comprehension on his face that I’d seen on the faces of the French customers at Breakfast in America earlier that week. I realized that once again I had passed seamlessly into an American cultural context that just happened to be located in Paris.

So in the end, my “Parisians should speak French to me because I’m in Paris to learn French” logic doesn’t seem to hold together, considering that there seem to be a whole lot of instances in Paris that can make Parisians feel really out of place if they don’t understand English and American business etiquette. So the next time a café server tells me the price of a coffee in English, will I gamely switch over to English? No, of course not. I’ll keep responding to him in French no matter how good his English seems to be and probably irritate the heck out of him. But I also won’t storm angrily out of the café at the end of the conversation.