"FRANCE" by tapis_volant

The thing that surprised me about France and especially Paris was the amount of dog faeces on the sidewalks everywhere. I still have memories of walking down the Champs Elysees in Paris towards the Arc de Triomphe and becoming aware of a woman strolling past me, dressed in long fur coat and the horror I felt when the bottom edge of the coat seemed to almost brush over the dog excrement strewn here and there on the pavement.

The French are great dog lovers. They really adore their animals, more so than us Aussies. At least, that's what my impression was. They take their dogs everywhere with them. I even saw, on one occasion, a dog and his owner in a small suprmarket on the Champs Elysees.

Everwhere, you will find these sanichiens...little fenced off areas filled with sand where your dog may relieve itself en route. There was evidence, however, that some dogs just didn't make it into the enclosure if you were to go by the small little deposits found outside the sanichien.

Now, all this talk about excrement prompts me to think about the word "caca" which the French euphemistically use to talk about our idiomatic "poo". I believe the pronunciation of "caca" is rather jarring on the French ear and is in some way related to the Greek from which English has inherited the term "cacophony" meaning "disonance". So, the French don't like that harsh sounding "k" sound we have in English, tending to soften it with the use of the cedilla. "Garçon" is not "garkon" but "garson".