Do the French really have no sense of humour?
English-speakers have spent decades deriding French humour, but are the French truly not funny? Or are their jokes just hard for foreigners to understand?
The French are known for many things - from delicious gastronomy and tasty wine to less sympathetic clichés about rudeness and arrogance - but being funny doesn't usually come out high on lists of French stereotypes.
To many English-speakers, French humour is at best an enigma and at worst non-existent. Both blogs and mainstream news outlets like the New York Times and The Economist have been pondering whether the French possess any sense of humour for years, or centuries in the case of the NYT.
In a 2009 survey exploring British views of the French, 71 percent of participants said that the French are 'sexier' than the British, but 80 percent said the British had a better sense of humour. Consolation prize? Of course not.
A case for French humour
On the other side, the French have spent decades defending themselves against the charge of un-funniness. The French writer Voltaire penned a letter in 1761 fact-checking the assumption that humour is a specifically British trait.
He wrote: "The English have a term to signify this jest, this true comedy, this gaiety, this cleverness, these jibes which escape a man without his suspecting it; and they render this idea by the word humeur - or humour, which they pronounce yumor.
"And they believe that they alone have this humour; that the other nations have no term to express this character of wit. However, it is an old word in our language, used in this sense in several comedies by (Pierre) Corneille."
READ MORE: Readers recommend: The best French comedy films and TV series
You can listen to team at The Local discuss the issue of the French sense of humour in our podcast. Download it by clicking here or listen below.
The French have even turned the stereotype into a joke, as seen in the historical comedy 'Ridicule'. After a trip to England, an aristocrat returns to court in France and says to his friend:
– They have a form of conversation called 'humour', which makes everyone laugh.
– "Humour... is that like wit (ésprit)?"
– No, not really.
– How would you translate it then?
– Ah well, I cannot. We do not really have a word for it in France.
Certainly ordinary French people like to think that they're funny - according to a 2019 survey by YouGov, 70 percent of French people considered themselves to be funny, with men more likely to say this than French women (74 percent versus 65 percent).
Young people felt they got more laughs than older folks, with a third of 18-24 year olds self describing as 'very funny', compared to just eight percent of over-55s.
However, Laurent Gaulet, author of almost 200 joke books, told Le Parisien that these statistics should be taken with a grain of salt.
"This proportion is so high, and it is undoubtedly because there is some confusion about what it means to have a sense of humour - whether it is being receptive to jokes versus actually being funny. We can have one without being the other," Gaulet said.
Lost in translation
There's an obvious issue with language - cracking jokes in a language that is not your mother tongue is hard.
But even fluent French-speakers often struggle with French humour - and the reason for this is twofold; firstly comedy in all countries includes a lot of cultural references which foreigners may not understand and secondly the style of humour may be different to what they are used to.
The popular practice of 'stand-up' - whose beginnings can be traced back to minstrel shows and vaudeville in the United States - only arrived recently in France.
These days, France counts many stand-up comedians - and there's even a Netflix show (Drôle or Stand Up) about the lives of struggling stand-ups in Paris - but the genre is still in its early years compared to the US and UK.
As for humour styles, Brits often lament a lack of personal 'self-deprecation' in French comedy.
British comedian and author Stephen Clarke told The Local in a previous interview that "really making fun of yourself is a difficult thing for French comedians."
"They have to show they're more intelligent, cooler, sexier than you, so they hold back. Either that, or they go wacky to show how crazy and liberated they are and what a good acting school they went to," Clarke said.
The Paris-based British-Irish stand-up comedian Paul Taylor told 20 Minutes that "the English are more comfortable with self-deprecation (l’autodérision) than the French."
Meanwhile, the popular French comedian Blanche Gardin noted that French audiences tend to get uncomfortable when the comic gets too intimate. She explained in an interview with American writer Pamela Druckerman that "we’re not used to sharing personal information quickly in relationships."
"In France, we always think about being losers, so we don’t want to hear people speaking about it. We don’t have this positive background, to say, ‘Let’s enjoy this loser thing,"' Gardin said.
Comedy styles
However, this does not mean that the French are not funny, but rather that their humour comes in different forms.
Popular types of French comedy tend to be esprit and tac-au-tac, farce, and satire.
The word esprit actually means ‘wit’. This type of humour is highly valued in France and relies heavily on subtle, yet piercing quips, known as tac-au-tac, which foreigners occasionally mistake for rudeness.
The Paris-based American blogger, Courtney Traub, explained about her efforts to 'crack' this jabbing comedy style, calling it a "ping-pong game".
Traub wrote about feeling "routinely crushed by what [she] interpreted as mean, undiplomatic comments," describing sly teasing from store clerks and colleagues. Over time, as she gained confidence, she felt empowered to respond with a gentle banter of her own, earning the respect of her French counterparts.
Farce is another style of French humour - it is sometimes translated as 'prank', but the genre is more clever than a slapstick banana-peel sketch.
It started with religious dramas and plays in the Middle Ages, many of which involved mockery and exaggerations of real-life situations, as well as some physical humour.
Originally, farce was seen as a theatrical style associated with the common people, with tragedy reserved for the upper class. However, the famous French playwright Molière helped to democratise the genre, bringing farce and 'buffoon humour' to the aristocracy.
These days, spoof films take their cues from the original farce style - and are extremely popular in France.
One of the most popular and enduring comedy styles in France is satire, which has historically had an anti-clerical tinge to it. By some accounts, satire helped to fuel the French revolution, as it made fun of the powers-at-be.
Modern examples, like the Charlie Hebdo and Le Canard Enchaine magazines, are held in high-esteem for keeping elites in check, despite critiques that caricatures sometimes go too far.
Some tips
Studying French comedy styles may not magically make the French funny to baffled anglophones, so here are a few tips for cracking French humour.
Humour is cultural and linguistic and foreigners may struggle with word-play (jeux de mots), hidden irony (the second degré), or obscure historical or film references.
There's not a lot of studying that can be done for jeux de mots, other than to keep plugging away at French language learning so you will (one day) have a vocabulary wide enough to understand the references.
But many French jokes have cultural context - all humour references culture, but the anthropologist Edward T. Hall considered France to be a 'high context culture', meaning communication tends to be more nuanced, subtle and indirect.
These types of cultures expect a higher degree of context, particularly in humour.
Therefore the more you know about France and its culture, the more likely you are to 'get' the joke.
For example, an advertising campaign for the US doughnut chain Krispy Kreme's French launch included the tag line 'macaron démission' - suggesting that the French pastry the macaron should give up since Krispy Kreme dougnuts are in town. But the phrase is also a play on the political slogan Macron démission (Macron - resign) - and you won't really know that without following French news.
If you're keen to try and crack political or news-based comedy try watching news-based TV comedy shows like Quotidien, or reading satirical publications like Le Canard Enchainé - or simply follow their social media feeds.
Speaking of social media, there are lots of topical comedy feeds - we like Complots Faciles (easy conspiracy theories) on Facebook and Twitter, which mocks conspiracy theorists.
You can also expect a significant amount of references to old French films, comedies and TV shows - which you're unlikely to have seen if you didn't grow up in France. If you're looking for a crash course in the biggest stars of French music, cinema and stage we suggest Netflix comedy Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) which features big French stars playing a (hopefully exaggerated) version of themselves.
And you could always start by watching some of France's best known and classic comedies - we have a list of suggestions.
READ MORE: Think the French aren't funny? Try these classic films
Comments (5)
See Also
The French are known for many things - from delicious gastronomy and tasty wine to less sympathetic clichés about rudeness and arrogance - but being funny doesn't usually come out high on lists of French stereotypes.
To many English-speakers, French humour is at best an enigma and at worst non-existent. Both blogs and mainstream news outlets like the New York Times and The Economist have been pondering whether the French possess any sense of humour for years, or centuries in the case of the NYT.
In a 2009 survey exploring British views of the French, 71 percent of participants said that the French are 'sexier' than the British, but 80 percent said the British had a better sense of humour. Consolation prize? Of course not.
A case for French humour
On the other side, the French have spent decades defending themselves against the charge of un-funniness. The French writer Voltaire penned a letter in 1761 fact-checking the assumption that humour is a specifically British trait.
He wrote: "The English have a term to signify this jest, this true comedy, this gaiety, this cleverness, these jibes which escape a man without his suspecting it; and they render this idea by the word humeur - or humour, which they pronounce yumor.
"And they believe that they alone have this humour; that the other nations have no term to express this character of wit. However, it is an old word in our language, used in this sense in several comedies by (Pierre) Corneille."
READ MORE: Readers recommend: The best French comedy films and TV series
You can listen to team at The Local discuss the issue of the French sense of humour in our podcast. Download it by clicking here or listen below.
The French have even turned the stereotype into a joke, as seen in the historical comedy 'Ridicule'. After a trip to England, an aristocrat returns to court in France and says to his friend:
– They have a form of conversation called 'humour', which makes everyone laugh.
– "Humour... is that like wit (ésprit)?"
– No, not really.
– How would you translate it then?
– Ah well, I cannot. We do not really have a word for it in France.
Certainly ordinary French people like to think that they're funny - according to a 2019 survey by YouGov, 70 percent of French people considered themselves to be funny, with men more likely to say this than French women (74 percent versus 65 percent).
Young people felt they got more laughs than older folks, with a third of 18-24 year olds self describing as 'very funny', compared to just eight percent of over-55s.
However, Laurent Gaulet, author of almost 200 joke books, told Le Parisien that these statistics should be taken with a grain of salt.
"This proportion is so high, and it is undoubtedly because there is some confusion about what it means to have a sense of humour - whether it is being receptive to jokes versus actually being funny. We can have one without being the other," Gaulet said.
Lost in translation
There's an obvious issue with language - cracking jokes in a language that is not your mother tongue is hard.
But even fluent French-speakers often struggle with French humour - and the reason for this is twofold; firstly comedy in all countries includes a lot of cultural references which foreigners may not understand and secondly the style of humour may be different to what they are used to.
The popular practice of 'stand-up' - whose beginnings can be traced back to minstrel shows and vaudeville in the United States - only arrived recently in France.
These days, France counts many stand-up comedians - and there's even a Netflix show (Drôle or Stand Up) about the lives of struggling stand-ups in Paris - but the genre is still in its early years compared to the US and UK.
As for humour styles, Brits often lament a lack of personal 'self-deprecation' in French comedy.
British comedian and author Stephen Clarke told The Local in a previous interview that "really making fun of yourself is a difficult thing for French comedians."
"They have to show they're more intelligent, cooler, sexier than you, so they hold back. Either that, or they go wacky to show how crazy and liberated they are and what a good acting school they went to," Clarke said.
The Paris-based British-Irish stand-up comedian Paul Taylor told 20 Minutes that "the English are more comfortable with self-deprecation (l’autodérision) than the French."
Meanwhile, the popular French comedian Blanche Gardin noted that French audiences tend to get uncomfortable when the comic gets too intimate. She explained in an interview with American writer Pamela Druckerman that "we’re not used to sharing personal information quickly in relationships."
"In France, we always think about being losers, so we don’t want to hear people speaking about it. We don’t have this positive background, to say, ‘Let’s enjoy this loser thing,"' Gardin said.
Comedy styles
However, this does not mean that the French are not funny, but rather that their humour comes in different forms.
Popular types of French comedy tend to be esprit and tac-au-tac, farce, and satire.
The word esprit actually means ‘wit’. This type of humour is highly valued in France and relies heavily on subtle, yet piercing quips, known as tac-au-tac, which foreigners occasionally mistake for rudeness.
The Paris-based American blogger, Courtney Traub, explained about her efforts to 'crack' this jabbing comedy style, calling it a "ping-pong game".
Traub wrote about feeling "routinely crushed by what [she] interpreted as mean, undiplomatic comments," describing sly teasing from store clerks and colleagues. Over time, as she gained confidence, she felt empowered to respond with a gentle banter of her own, earning the respect of her French counterparts.
Farce is another style of French humour - it is sometimes translated as 'prank', but the genre is more clever than a slapstick banana-peel sketch.
It started with religious dramas and plays in the Middle Ages, many of which involved mockery and exaggerations of real-life situations, as well as some physical humour.
Originally, farce was seen as a theatrical style associated with the common people, with tragedy reserved for the upper class. However, the famous French playwright Molière helped to democratise the genre, bringing farce and 'buffoon humour' to the aristocracy.
These days, spoof films take their cues from the original farce style - and are extremely popular in France.
One of the most popular and enduring comedy styles in France is satire, which has historically had an anti-clerical tinge to it. By some accounts, satire helped to fuel the French revolution, as it made fun of the powers-at-be.
Modern examples, like the Charlie Hebdo and Le Canard Enchaine magazines, are held in high-esteem for keeping elites in check, despite critiques that caricatures sometimes go too far.
Some tips
Studying French comedy styles may not magically make the French funny to baffled anglophones, so here are a few tips for cracking French humour.
Humour is cultural and linguistic and foreigners may struggle with word-play (jeux de mots), hidden irony (the second degré), or obscure historical or film references.
There's not a lot of studying that can be done for jeux de mots, other than to keep plugging away at French language learning so you will (one day) have a vocabulary wide enough to understand the references.
But many French jokes have cultural context - all humour references culture, but the anthropologist Edward T. Hall considered France to be a 'high context culture', meaning communication tends to be more nuanced, subtle and indirect.
These types of cultures expect a higher degree of context, particularly in humour.
Therefore the more you know about France and its culture, the more likely you are to 'get' the joke.
For example, an advertising campaign for the US doughnut chain Krispy Kreme's French launch included the tag line 'macaron démission' - suggesting that the French pastry the macaron should give up since Krispy Kreme dougnuts are in town. But the phrase is also a play on the political slogan Macron démission (Macron - resign) - and you won't really know that without following French news.
If you're keen to try and crack political or news-based comedy try watching news-based TV comedy shows like Quotidien, or reading satirical publications like Le Canard Enchainé - or simply follow their social media feeds.
Speaking of social media, there are lots of topical comedy feeds - we like Complots Faciles (easy conspiracy theories) on Facebook and Twitter, which mocks conspiracy theorists.
You can also expect a significant amount of references to old French films, comedies and TV shows - which you're unlikely to have seen if you didn't grow up in France. If you're looking for a crash course in the biggest stars of French music, cinema and stage we suggest Netflix comedy Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) which features big French stars playing a (hopefully exaggerated) version of themselves.
And you could always start by watching some of France's best known and classic comedies - we have a list of suggestions.
READ MORE: Think the French aren't funny? Try these classic films
Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.
Please log in here to leave a comment.