I noticed that the most common misunderstandings are everyday phrases. I find that everyday expressions are more affirmative in English. French is a language of negation. I don’t usually say sentences that are grammatically constructed like that. When I talk with my hosts, I find most of my answers are affirmative, therefore I give the perception that I am optimistic. It shocks me because my friends tell me I’m a little pessimistic. When I ask my hosts their opinions, they reply with a negative term like “It’s not bad.” My hosts seem surprised when I answer positively. I feel that the negative expressions are more honest than the positively structured expressions like “It’s good.” It’s an American characteristic to be more polite than necessary, so I think the reason why I prefer to answer questions in that manner reflect my desire to be reassuring. I think this mentality reflects the fear of being rude. I think that Americans cannot handle criticism, so a phrase like “That’s not bad” evokes a feeling of inadequacy. This fear is an integral quality of the American psyche that affects the interactions between French and American people. For French people, this typically American characteristic evokes a kind of false attitude. The French speak more frankly than Americans and because of this cultural difference, there are misunderstandings between the two cultures. I find that it affects first impressions the most because we are more concerned with how others look at us while that is not a priority for French people.<\/p>\n
-Samantha Mendoza-Ferguson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I noticed that the most common misunderstandings are everyday phrases. I find that everyday expressions are more affirmative in English. French is a language of negation. I don’t usually say sentences that are grammatically constructed like that. When I talk with my hosts, I find most of my answers are affirmative, therefore I give the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4847,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[30101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-la-une-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}