Stereotypical Stereotypes

There has been a rather interesting change in my life of recent, I am not quite hanging up my beret yet, nor throwing away the garlic, but I will have to make room in my cupboard for a matadors’ costume and some maracas. Yes, it is time the Champagne budge up to allow the Sangría some room. Enough of the corny, stereotypical metaphors, what I am trying to say is that I am soon to be studying my beloved French alongside its trendy counterpart, Spanish. 

Zut Alors!

Although I may have taken my stereotypes one step too far, I believe there is something interesting about them. When we think of the word personification, we think of that vocab list our English GCSE teacher made us learn for our poetry exam, but who do these languages become?  

I have an image of French as a mature, older character sprouting love poems, standing up straight with a moustache standing next to his cool aunt, eating some ham, shrugging her shoulders and saying, ‘que?’. Now I may be taking this too far, but it is funny that there is some truth in them. The stereotypes are there for a reason, because when the sunburnt Brit comes back from their carb-free holiday to Marbs, the relaxed,  pig-eating and tanned description of a Spaniard corresponds with their personal experience (at least, with the brief encounters of Spanish people that they actually had). 

Dos cervezas por favor!

Understandably a whole population will not completely match their stereotype, there will always be Brits who haven’t heard of Arsenal and hate tea. But if these stereotypes give us a recognisable identity within which we can be individual? Well I rather like the sound of that.

Are these stereotypes true?