Dinner Etiquette

[cassis]

Does nobody watch Un Diner Presque Parfait?  See the French entertaining each other to dinner every weekday night on M6 around 6.00pm.

You'll see every rule of "etiquette" broken at some point and hypocricy and self delusion by the bucketful.

On the evidence of UDPP, it does not matter what you do - it'll be wrong.  [:D]

[Jill<br><br>Jill (99)]

Just a few general comments on things all the way through this topic:

In the Wikipedia info about table manners, it talks of saying please and thankyou.  The comment which was always made by English host families (when I ran the English end of a Sejour Linquistique operation) was that the French teenagers never said please and thank you, and I've even heard that comment about French adults too.  I've always excused this (rightly or wrongly) by saying that perhaps the French feel that if they have asked for something using the conditional tense, it is more polite - the difference between "may I" and "can I".  Another thing about "merci" is the confusion it causes.  If someone comes to you with a bottle of wine and starts pouring into your glass, it is a natural English tendancy to say thank you.  The French tend to interpret this is that you want them to stop pouring at the moment you say "merci", so if you like you wine, hold back on the manners until the glass is full!

Another thing is about the positioning of knives and forks.  When we had lunch with one of my friends a few years ago she had some really attractive "Pose Couvert" which were like little ornaments placed each side of the plate, at about 10 to 2 position, so that you could rest your knife and fork there between courses.  She said they had belonged to her Grandmother.  Has anyone seen any of these?  They were in pairs i.e. each guest would have a different matching set, but they were all from one set following a theme.  I can't remember what it was now.  It may have been animals, but that sounds a bit childish.

Regarding knives, everyone used knives before forks came to this part of Europe.  I've forgotten when the fork did actually come but I expect it was an upper class thing for a long time, anyway.  Quite a lot of our French friends use their knife to put cheese or fruit to their mouths.

 

 

[odile]

Hi Jill. thought about you today - I was looking round a charity shop today in Oakham (Rutland) and they had a pair of really nice pose couvert- funny as I have never seen any in the UK before... I am very lucky to have inherited 12 lovely silver ones from my grand mother, and friends always comment on how nice they are.

[cassis]

[quote user="odile"]I was looking round a charity shop today ... and they had a pair of really nice pose couvert- funny as I have never seen any in the UK before...

[/quote]

You need to go into more Chinese restaurants. [;-)]  Pose-baguettes. [:)]

[WJT]

I could have read it wrong but I thought in Clair's link it said that they shouldn't be used except for informal situations. Is that true? By the way, I have never seen them before but had read about them somewhere. Perhaps an article on French etiquette that I would have forgotten everything I read once again while sitting at the French dinner table. [:$]

[odile]

au contraire (Poirot) they are only used for VERY formal dinners (well not in my house as we don't formal - but just want to them them out of the drawer from time to time)

[WJT]

Thanks, I thought I may have read it wrong.[:$]