The culture of France and of the French people has been shaped by geography, by profound historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. The capital of France, Paris, is famous for its high culture and world-renowned arts firstly in Europe in the nineteenth century and today, worldwide. In modern days now whenever people mention about France, they will think of the arts, cinema, fashion and cuisine. French culture today is rather complicated as it is marked both by great regional and socioeconomic differences and by strong unifying tendencies.

Firstly, we will look at the definition of ‘French culture’ for both the past and present. In the past, French culture refers to a specific geographic region where the people are of common ethnicity and religion. However, even before the late nineteenth century, France was largely a mix of local customs and regional differences that the aims of the French Revolution had only begun to work against. Today's France remains a nation of numerous indigenous and foreign languages, of multiple ethnicities and religions.

In the past, the powerful internal forces such as the French educational system, mandatory military service, state linguistic and cultural policies had try to create a French culture identity despite of the vast mix of regional differences. However despite the French Revolution effort, France today still remains marked by social class and by important regional differences in culture.

In recent years, to fight the loss of regional diversity, many social forces in France have promoted forms of multiculturalism but due to the French taking great pride in its national identity and fear that its culture will be threatened by American cultural hegemony, the idea is hard to accept.

However the last 50 years have shown that the interracial blending of some native French and newcomers stands as a vibrant and boasted feature of French culture, from popular music to movies and literature. Therefore, alongside mixing of populations, exists also a cultural blending that is present in France today.

Culture

France is renowned for its culture due to its complexity and various forces affecting it that makes French culture all the more intriguing. There are many gems and jewels scattered in French literature that have found their place even in the world literature. The French supremacy in all the branches of art is the reason why culture of France is so highly revered all across Europe and the world.

Etiquette

The French attach much value to their customs and traditions. Etiquette in France is quite elaborate and formal. It is customary to greet anyone with a warm handshake. The French extend this courtesy to even their colleagues. It is quite common a practice to shake hands while leaving the office. Both men and women hug each other as a mark of good acquaintance. The dining etiquette too needs to be properly followed to avoid any embarrassment in the public. The French, while dining, keep their arms on the table. One essential point, you should always greet a stranger with Monsieur (for male) and Madame (for the fairer sex).

Wedding

Curious as it may sound, the French literally behead champagne bottles at weddings. A specially made saber is used to behead the bottle. This tradition is said to have generated during Napoleonic times when champagne bottles were beheaded to celebrate victory.

Christmas

Holiday season, which kicks off with Christmas, sees many old customs and traditions in France being followed with a renewed vigor. Family members and friends join in the late Christmas dinner after the holy Christmas Mass. Roasted turkey is the most common item on the menu. As the custom has it, Church bells do not ring on Thursday prior to the Good Friday. The bells ring again on Easter Sunday.

There are two famous indigenous groups in France namely The Franks and Gaul.

The Franks

The Franks comprises a federation of Germanic people who entered France during the decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe. They were a West Germanic tribal confederation first attested in the third century as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River.

Contemporary definitions of the ethnicity of the Franks vary by period and point of view. Many in the East used the term "Franks" to describe or refer to Western Europeans and Roman Catholic Christians in general.

Gaul

The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France and Belgium, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish.

The Gauls practiced a form of animism, comparing human characteristics to lakes, streams, mountains, and other natural features and granting them divine status. Also, worship of animals was not uncommon; the animal most sacred to the Gauls was the boar, which can be found on many Gallic military standards, much like the Roman eagle.

As France take great pride in its national identity, it is only natural that French is their official language. There are several regional languages spoken as well but they make the minority. According to Enquête familiale, Insee, 1999, statistics have shown that

• French: 42,100,000 (92%)
• Occitan: 1,670,000 (3.65%)
• German and German dialects: 1,440,000 (3.15%)
• Oïl languages (excl. French): 1,420,000 (3.10%)
• Arabic: 1,170,000 (2.55%)

As you can see all the other languages only totals up to a measly 8%.

Occitan

Occitan language is a Romance language spoken by about 1,500,000 people in southern France. All Occitan speakers use French as their official and cultural language, but Occitan dialects are used for everyday purposes and show no signs of extinction.

German and German dialects

German dialects are any of the varieties of standard German, Luxembourgish and Yiddish, as well as the local German.

Oïl languages

Oïl languages are a group of languages or dialects including standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives spoken today in the northern half of France.

Arabic

Arabic is a Central Semitic Language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages.

The French mode of education is very much like the system in Singapore where it is highly centralized and organized. It is divided into 3 different stages: primary, secondary and higher education.

Governance

All educational programmes in France are regulated by the Ministry of National Education. The head of the ministry is the Minister of Education, one of the highest-ranking officials in the cabinet.

The teachers in public primary and secondary schools are all state civil servants, making the largest employer in the country. Professors and researchers in France's universities are also employed by the state. At the primary and secondary levels, the curriculum is the same for all French students in any given grade, which includes public, semi-public and subsidised institutions.

Primary Education

Kids start their primary school life at the age of 6. However, parents usually send their children to nursery classes at 3 years old which are basically day-care centre. The last year of nursery is especially important as the kids would be introduced to reading.

When they move on to primary school, students would learn to write and develop their reading skills. Very much like education everywhere else, one teacher is assigned to a single class.

Secondary Education

French secondary education is divided into two schools – the college for the first four years after primary and the lycée for the next three years.

The colleges is the first official diploma a pupil has to sit and is not required in order to enter lycée. Until 2006 the school marks for the whole of the third and final year were taken into account for a percentage of the mark. The rest of the mark consisted of the final exam, the brevet. Pupils were only tested on French, Mathematics and History for the exam.

Starting in 2007, only the marks from the final year (3ème) were taken into consideration.

The baccalauréat is the end-of-lycée diploma students sit for in order to enter university. It is generally taken at 18 if the pupil has not repeated a class during secondary school.

Higher Education

Higher education in France is divided between grandes écoles and public universities. Grandes écoles are selective whereas with universities, as long as you have a baccalaureat you can get in to one. This has led to an overwhelming amount of first year students, for example at the university of Montpellier, first year students have had to sit outside their lecture rooms and try to listen to lectures from steps stairs and corridors, unless they get there very early to bag the seats that are inside.

Sports

• Cycling

France is famous for its cycling since Tour de France, an international cycling road race that attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators each year. Established more than a century ago, the annual summer race covers some 3,600 km (2,235 miles) over the course of three weeks, finishing in Paris.

• Soccer

Soccer is extremely popular in larger towns since the country is pretty good at the sport. In 1998 during The World Cup, not only was this global event was hosted by France but France also won The World Cup. From then on, the popularity of soccer has skyrocketed.

• Rugby

Rugby league has a strong following in the south and southwest of France where favourite teams being Toulouse, Montauban and St-Godens.

• French Balls

France’s most traditional ball games are petanque and the similar, though more formal, boules. Both are played by village men in work clothes on rough gravel, or sandy pitch known as a boulodrome, scratched out wherever a bit of flat and shady ground can be found.

Here is a video to show you an example of the game

Festivals

• Bastille Day

The Bastille was a prison in Paris, known formally as Bastille Saint-Antoine and is best known today because of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, which lead to the end of the country's monarchist rule and the establishment of a new French Republic. The event was commemorated one year later and was declared a national holiday. Nowadays it's still a day of celebration for the French, and today the July Column and the Opéra Bastille are located in La Place de la Bastille.

• Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival is the world's most prestigious film festival and is held in May each year in Cannes, in the south of France. The most prestigious award given out at Cannes is the Palme d'Or ("Golden Palm") for the best film.

• Nice Jazz Festival

Nice city in the south of France, receives more than 45,000 visitors each year, between musicians and spectators. All of them are there for the Nice Festival of Jazz that takes place in the Arenes de Cimiez every summer. Concerts are held each night between 7pm and midnight.

Bread

Nothing is more French than bread. More than 80% of all French people eat it at every meal, and it comes in an infinite variety. All bakeries have baguettes, which are long and thin and weigh 250g, and wider loaves of what are simply called pains. A pain, which weighs 400g, is softer on the inside and has a less crispy crust than a baguette. Both types are at their best if eaten within four hours of baking.

Bread has experienced a renaissance in France in recent years and most bakeries also carry heavier, more expensive breads made with all sorts of grains and cereals. These heavier breads keep much longer than baguettes and standard white-flour breads.

Bread is baked at various times during the day, so it’s available fresh as early as 6am and also in the afternoon. Most bakeries close for one day a week, but the days are staggered so that a town or neighbourhood is never left without a place to buy a loaf.

Cheese

France has nearly 500 varieties of cheese produced at farms, dairies, mountain huts, monasteries and factories. They are made from either cow’s, goat’s or ewe’s milk, which can be raw or pasteurised.

The choice on offer at a fromagerie (cheese shop) can be overwhelming, but fromagers (cheese merchants) always allow you to sample before you buy and are usually very generous with their advice and guidance. The following list divides French cheeses into five main groups as they are usually presented in a fromagerie and recommends several types to try.

• Goat’s milk cheese is usually creamy and both sweet and a little salty when fresh, but hardens and gets much saltier as it matures.
• “Veined” or “blue cheese” is so called because the veins often resemble parsley.
• “Soft cheese” is moulded or rind-washed.
• “Semi-hard cheese” is uncooked, pressed cheese.
• “Hard cheese” in France is always cooked and pressed.

Museum and Monuments

The Louvre Museum, containing one of the world’s great art collections, was extensively remodelled at the end of the 20th century, with a notable addition of a dramatic steel-and-glass pyramid entrance. The Musee d'Orsay, created out of a former railway station, houses a fine, large collection of 19th- and early 20th-century art and artifacts, while the Georges Pompidous National Centre of Art and Culture, with its industrially inspired architecture, concentrates on the 20th century. The centre has an important library and media collection, and the square in front of it provides an open-air stage for jugglers, musicians, fire-eaters, and other street performers.

Merchandising

One very famous event would be the Tour de France. This event has attracted so many sponsors in hope of taking advantage of this mega event to promote its companies. Some of the many sponsors include Carrefour, Skoda, Vittel, Brandt, Nike etc.

Theming

Musee d'Orsay may not be as massive size as the Louvre Museum, but its Impressionist collection is among the best in the world and has attracted 2.1 million visitors annually. This is all good but why does it has to be housed in a former rail station? It simply makes no sense at all as the rail station has nothing to do with the arts displayed in the Musee d'Orsay.

Performative Labour

The famous medieval theme park in France, Grand Parc Puy Du Fou, is much like Disneyland. The only difference is its theme. One thing really unqiue about the place is that the frontline service such as the ticketing counters would usually dress themselves up into medieval costumes such as knights. This is a deliberate act by them just to enhance the medieval atmosphere in the place and their work are usually more focused on performance rather than the actual objectives of their job.

Positive

In 1999 France was the most visited destiny (70 million tourists), followed by Spain (51 million) and the United States country that registry the highest income by international tourism. This brought about a huge increase in the economic sector where tourism was the main generating revenue in France. As tourism takes its place in the economy, many tourists attractions were promoted worldwide. Attractions such as the Louvre Museum and the Eiffel Tower are two world famous attractions. As these tourists’ spots begin to attract more people, employment rates will increase to cater to the ever increasing demand to view these sites.

When more tourists arrives to France, they begin to use some of its local products and spread the usefulness of it to their fellow countries. This resulted in the commercialisation of local products such as “Peugeot” (automobile) and the world-famous water “Evian”.

Negative

Unfortunately, growth of tourism in France brings about negative factors too. In order to cater to tourist’s demand, there have to be destruction of landscape to make way for modern infrastructure. One good example would be the Disneyland in Paris.

Tourists arrival also brought a rise in production of disposal. This contributes to the climate change and acid rain that are increasingly more common not only in France but the rest of the world.

Indigenous tribes in France such as The Franks and Gaul have their land stripped away from them without permission by the government and use these places to build tourists attractions. This has cost a loss of traditional habits that are part of the history and cultural of France.

It has also been noted that there is a raise of prostitution in France. This is inevitable as prostitution is the oldest profession in the world and more visitors arriving in France would only result in a crease in demand for sex tourism.

Yes, I feel that it is definitely the case. The commodification of tourism is contributing to irreversible changes in culture, tradition, and ecological balance, which is harmful for the global society. Even if the government would like to stop this from happening, it is inevitable as the economic benefits of tourism are simply too significant to ignore. Even national governments implement aggressive measures to promote tourism so that they can benefit from the huge money inflows despite knowing the risks that comes along with it.

As tourism brings about massive revenue, it normally caters to the tourist’s demand as they are the pivot of whether the economic will rise or fall. So the government will do anything in its control even commodifying cultures and traditions to please tourists.

However instead of totally shunning commodification, tourism firms and governments would do well to take preemptive measures and safeguards to preserve the authenticity, culture, and ecological diversity of the tourism regions. Modern trends indicate that commodification will continue to happen, and hence, the emphasis should be on proper management of tourism for the benefit of mankind.