As I travel through Paris, everything is quieter. The streets are quiet, the trains are quiet, the cafés and restaurants and bakeries are quiet. The music playing in public spaces is quiet. The conversations between friends, families and lovers are quiet. The parks are quiet, blissfully so, with children on playgrounds and their parents gently reminding them to be careful. Even the torrential downpours of rain seem quiet – if not quiet, then gentle. Calm, serene. The pleasant sound of rain sprinkling down on the rooftops and the sidewalks, and the whispers of thunder rumbling overhead. Everything is quieter here. And I love it.
“English, but particularly American English, is a loud language.”
I am a naturally quiet person. I am soft-spoken, both literally and figuratively. More often than not, when I am talking to someone, I have to repeat myself because they couldn’t hear me. When asked to raise my voice, I struggle to, and I feel as if I am shouting. I don’t like loud noises, I don’t yell, and I don’t like yelling. I am just quiet.
I’m unlike my family in this sense. I don’t know that I would call anyone in my family soft-spoken, perhaps with the exception of my grandmother, but I do know that the majority of them would call me as such. The majority of my family speaks American English primarily, and Americans, as I am learning, generally speak louder than Parisians. Much louder, actually. We were told this on the first day we arrived in Paris and were, let’s say, reminded by the Paris center staff to keep our volume in mind as we travel around. Americans are just louder. Our culture is loud and boisterous (and a tad obnoxious), and I imagine this translates into our traditions of speaking as well.
A Polish library I saw outside of a cafe!
Half of my family are from Poland, speak Polish, and are equally as loud in Polish as in English, if not louder. While there aren’t any ways, officially speaking, to linguistically distinguish between “loud” languages and “quiet” languages, Polish, in my personal opinion, feels like a loud language. It is a language chock full of sibilants–loud, noisy fricatives, hissing sounds like “s,” “z,” “sh,” and “zh.” The air whooshes past your tongue in a frantic state, and it fills the whole room with sound. In Polish, it is not uncommon to have two sibilants back to back. S-z. Sh-ch. I awkwardly trip over the sounds as I try to pronounce some of these words. The point being, another loud language.
French speakers here in Paris are different. They speak in soft whispers. When I walk into a café or bakery, I am greeted with a gentle, “Bonjour,” and suddenly I feel like the loud one. It is an interesting shift in perspective from constantly having to raise my voice to be heard. When I am telling a story, I get louder with excitement, and I have to remind myself to be quieter. Eavesdropping is nearly impossible here, in my few days of experience, and it tells quite the story about the city.
Ironically enough, one of the loudest places I have encountered so far was the Sainte-Chapelle, a gorgeous chapel on the Île de la Cité. The reason being, of course, the tourists. The main floor was covered in signs reminding visitors to be quiet. Despite this, there was a loud chatter when I entered, and one of the workers (quite loudly) shushed the crowd multiple times in the ten minutes I was on that floor. I kept quiet and to myself, appreciating the art on my own.
The lower floor of the Sainte-Chapelle, where there was a loud hum of noise. I felt like shushing them myself.
(Shushing, by the way, is a sibilant. The “sh” sound pierces through, hissing loudly and obnoxiously, and can be sustained, unlike if you were to try to shush someone by going “bbbbb” or “ggggg.” Just a thought.)
What makes Paris quieter must have to do with the easygoing nature of the city. No one is in any rush to get their words out, so there is no need to speak loud enough for everyone to hear you. There is also, of course, the stereotypical culture of judgment in the city that contributes to this, for how could you gossip about the person across from you on the Métro if you weren’t speaking quietly?
I love the serenity; it brings me a sense of joy and peace as I amble through the streets. At the same time, I do miss the hustle and bustle of other cities I have been to. I miss the loud, boisterous laughter, the excited conversations that one gets to overhear, but there is something so unique, so special, about walking the streets at night and being able to hear a pin drop from a hundred feet away. The sound of silence is unrivaled after a long day.