A depressing realization: I can memorize French vocabulary, but I can’t memorize the culture. Some things just continue to puzzle me: sitting in a theater watching a French movie, why does the whole place erupt in laughter when I have absolutely no idea why? And why is it that when I laugh during the same movie, the rest of the audience is completely silent? And the obsession with the Masons–what’s up with that?
I think that the Freemason thing might be related to the generalized French suspicion of associationssince the Revolution of 1789, but that’s just a guess…
My coronavirus planque (hiding place) of the moment: New Orleans, Louisiana. I know a bunch of French teachers here, and delight in the opportunity to explain various oddities of American culture to them. What is a “maraschino cherry,” exactly? (No clue, actually.) What are comprehensive, liability, and uninsured motorist? (As people try to figure out what to do with their summer off now that they realize that if they go home to France, they risk not being able to cross the American border in the fall, in which case they would lose their jobs. Consequently, people are buying cars, renting campers, and just generally looking for means of transportation that will allow them to visit the United States without ever having to board an airplane.) And most puzzling of all: if graham crackers are crackers, why are they sweet??
I don’t know, and in fact I find that fact even more puzzling than the French, since as an American, I am aware that they were meant to be a health food. From Wikipedia:
The graham cracker was inspired by the preaching of Sylvester Graham who was part of the 19th-century temperance movement. He believed that minimizing pleasure and stimulation of all kinds, coupled with a vegetarian diet anchored by bread made from wheat coarsely ground at home, was how God intended people to live, and that following this natural law would keep people healthy. His preaching was taken up widely in the midst of the 1829–51 cholera pandemic.[3]:15–27 [4]:29–35 [5][6] His followers were called Grahamites and formed one of the first vegetarian movements in America; graham flour, graham crackers, and graham bread were created for them.
Temperance is avoidance of alcohol for reasons of morality. The temperance movement aimed to discourage alcohol use. It eventually resulted in Prohibition, the national illegalization of alcohol production, sale, and use. Prohibition was a goldmine for the criminal underworld, and it was eventually repealed.
Oddly, this was intended to be an essay about French vocabulary for metal fasteners–nuts, bolts, and the like. So it goes sometimes…
English notes
comprehensive: A kind of auto insurance that reimburses you if something happens to your car, other than an accident.
liability: Insurance policy for a car that reimburses the other guy if you cause an accident.
uninsured motorist: Insurance policy for a car that reimburses you if the other guy causes an accident, but doesn’t have liability insurance of his own.
So:
Auto insurance for crashes: liability covers the other guy if you are at fault; uninsured motorist covers you if the other guy is at fault and doesn’t have a liability policy.
Auto insurance for everything other than crashes: comprehensive.
Just to make sure that we’ve got this straight, here’s a little quiz–scroll down past the graham cracker pictures for the answers.
- Your car is parked in front of your house. A tree falls on it. What kind of policy would get you reimbursed for the damage?
- You are driving to work when some asshole slams into your car and takes off–a hit-and-run in English, délit de fuite in French. What kind of policy would get you covered for the damage that he caused? (In theory, an asshole is intrinsically male. The female equivalent, according to the philosopher Aaron James (author of the classic Assholes: A Theory), is a bitch.)
- You are on your way home from visiting an alligator farm when you rear-end some guy on his way home from a tour of the bayou. What kind of policy would compensate him for the damages?
- You have liability insurance, but no other kind of auto insurance policy. A hailstorm ruins your paint job. Will your insurance company pay to have it redone?
- Which kind of auto insurance policy would you expect to be mandatory in every part of the United States, and why?
Answers to the auto insurance quiz
- Your car is parked in front of your house. A tree falls on it. What kind of policy would get you reimbursed for the damage? Comprehensive–if you have it. Otherwise, you’re screwed.
- You are driving to work when some asshole slams into your car and takes off–a hit-and-run in English, délit de fuite in French. What kind of policy would get you covered for the damage that he caused? (In theory, an asshole is intrinsically male. The female equivalent, according to the philosopher xxxx, is a bitch.) His liability policy, assuming that he has one and that the police can find him. If not: your uninsured motorist policy, if you have one. If you don’t: you’re fucked.
- You are on your way home from visiting an alligator farm when you rear-end some guy on his way home from a tour of the bayou. What kind of policy would compensate him for the damages? Your liability policy if you have one (and you’d damn well better–it’s mandatory. Otherwise, his uninsured motorist policy, if he has one. Otherwise, he’s fucked.
- You have liability insurance, but no other kind of auto insurance policy. A hailstorm ruins your paint job. Will your insurance company pay to have it redone? No. If you had comprehensive, it would cover this–otherwise, tough shit.
- Which kind of auto insurance policy would you expect to be mandatory in every part of the United States, and why? Liability, since at minimum you need to be able to compensate the other guy for any damage that you cause.
Zipf's Law 