April15
Back to the bises
In a previous article I gave my impressions of the French custom of exchanging cheek kisses aka faire la bise. (Last time I said faire les bises, but one of my colleagues corrected me), so I’ll trust him and just know that French is a difficult language with a lot of things that seem to make little sense [plus I couldn't find any good examples in the TLFi]. So even though I have never seen French people just do one bise, I will use the “locution verbale” faire la bise (au singulier, même s’il y a en fait plusieurs bises) when referring to this French custom.
Status update your bises
So as I have mentioned before with French culture sometimes people with whom you interact may change their behavior towards you. This could be just a special occasion occurrence and you shouldn’t count on it happening again. Or… you may have being upgraded to someone who deserves a bise.
Biseworthy
I must take this time to retract some of my prior statements concerning who is biseworthy. I had stated that you don’t faire la bise with your marchand de journaux, apparently, if this evening is any indication, I was wrong.That’s right folks, my newsvendor bised me.
I am not exactly sure how I went from mere magazine buyer to bisable, but it has definitely been an interesting relationship to watch evolve. I am not sure of every detail but the evolution went something like this:
The Daring Tutoyement
I sometimes like to play it fast and loose with my use of the tutoiement in French, most often I don’t do it on purpose. To me the vouvoiement takes a conscient effort on my behalf and I often slip up and just spout out whatever you happens to slide off of my tongue. More often than not it is just tu. Especially when one has acquired the habit of using the “marqueur discursif” tu vois? at the end of certain utterances then gets mocked while making a sentence worthy of the Little Prince English to French translation.
Yeah folks, that’s right, Antoine de Saint Exupery wrote that book in English. I don’t even think that he is the one who actually translated it into French, unlike Samuel Beckett, who first wrote En attendant Godot in French then insisted upon translating it himself into English, his native tongue.
If you didn’t catch that, it meant I was using the vous and tu forms in the same sentence. So needless to say to, I tutoyed my marchand one day. I think he liked it.
The small talk
From then on we were 2toyin’ each other like we were old school chums. Anyways, since he seemed to be a nice enough guy and as it turns out shares a similar education background as me, I would wave at him or chat with him a bit as I bought my magazines. Sometimes I didn’t even buy anything, I just asked him how things were.
The theory shattering bise
Today it came, the bise that made me re-examine my preconceived notions about fairing la bise. Why shouldn’t you give the people the bise that you see most often in your everyday life and with whom you enjoy nice conversations? If it happens that it is your marchard de journaux, don’t bise a snob.
Don’t engage the bise
Well, that may have left some of you wondering when you should approach someone for the bise. My best advice - let them come to you. Some of you may know the word laisser faire in English (borrowed bien sûr, from French) in the economic or governmental sense of the term, I adopt its other meaning, “noninterference in the affairs of others”. Basically, je laisse faire.
Voilà, hope you learned some interesting things about “French kisses” (in the cheeky sense). I know I did.