The Parisian apartment code of conduct

Can the type of housing a city provides for its residents influence their behaviour, and if it does, should UK cities be learning lessons from their French neighbours?

The shibboleth is an amusing thing. As the Hebrew Bible teaches us, it is a way of distinguishing between two groups of people on the basis of an expression which only one group can pronounce.

I have always thought that for the French the perfect shibboleth is the Paris commuter rail system, the Reseau Express Regional or RER.

Except you cannot say RER as an English speaker would. You have to use the French phonemes, so it comes out like an inarticulate guttural snarl "Eerrurreerrr". After 15 years I still cannot do it properly.

A variant of the shibboleth is the culturally specific object that is incomprehensible to the foreigner. Marmite is a good British one. French people genuinely retch when they are persuaded to try a piece of bread and marmite.

And for the French, my vote goes for the round wax lump known as the Boule Quies, roughly translated as the "quiet ball".

No-one outside France - perhaps not even the most brilliant of linguists - knows what a Boule Quies is. It is the trade name for a brand of ear plug that has become so familiar to the French over the years that it now means "ear-plug".

If you go to a chemist and ask for a "bouchon d'oreille" - which literally means "ear plug" - they will not know what you are talking about.

Read more here:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9463155.stm

I wonder how much 'reality' is in this observation.

Doesn't really fit to life in the paradise islands.