Valuing true friends is hard because English doesn't codify true friendship

My time in France taught me that a true friend--different from a "best friend" but maybe close to a "good friend"--is hard to come by and something that should be cherished. Yet, because of how English codifies friendship, these are the friends we often fail to see around us and recognize as such, thereby failing to build the relationships to a meaningful depth before life has us part our separate ways.

True friends are those who are there for you no matter what and appreciate who you are as an individual. As the French tell it, an ami arriving at your house to find you standing next to a dead body will not ask Why? but How can I help?

A friend--a copain--by contrast, is someone who you enjoy spending time with on a regular basis. My host mother in Paris had a copine she played cards with once a week for 33 years--and still considered only a copine, and nowhere near an amie. The etymology of this word reflects its significance--it comes from "to share bread." And further, although petit copain and petit ami both mean boyfriend, they clearly have very different connotations. Again in the case of romance, the connotation is that of relationship depth, and one that the English language lacks.

When Americans visit France (and especially Paris) they may find the French off-putting--the French often appear disinterested at your attempts of warmth and friendship, and indeed they rarely have many friends themselves. When you ask them why this is, they will tell you the analogy of la pêche et la noix de coco, or the peach and the coconut. Americans are very easy to get to know at first, like a peach's soft exterior, but very hard to get to know at a meaningful level, represented by the peach's pit. Whereas with the coconut, it's very hard to get to know the individual at first, but once you do, you are very easily able to learn all about who that individual is as a person. That same French person you posed the question to is likely to follow up by saying that with the coconut, the fruit is harder won and much more rewarding than the peach.

An important difference between true friends and friends is number, a reflection of effort. Dunbar's number may tell us we can maintain some level of "knowing" a person across 150 people (again, English fails to codify the difference between knowing a person vs a thing, where French uses connaître and savoir), but the number of true friendships someone can maintain is probably in the range of 5-10. You really have to invest emotional energy to maintain those relationships at the meaningful depth they warrant. The reality is--the French, who prefer to spend their time with amis, are afraid to take on new friends because of all the obligations that entails. The next time you are talking with a Frenchman (or Frenchwoman), keep in mind that you may be imposing on them with your friendliness in ways completely foreign to us Anglo-Saxons.

So all of this nuance--and obviously much more than I've laid out here--is captured by French in two of their most common, everyday words: ami and copain. Say what you will about the Whorfianism debate, but it is clearly easier to differentiate between your friends and your true friends when you have explicit labels that you and all of society use to describe each other. We can thus say that the French language and therefore culture codifies these mental models into these two words.

Is it wrong that English, spoken by us pêches anglo-saxones, fails to capture this friendship depth nuance and to allow us to manage our behavior by it easily? When I first learned this distinction my answer was that the English language was flawed. I had actually been burned, around this same time, by someone I thought was an ami but who proceeded to become a "frenemy" and betray my trust. Although we both called each other friend, he saw me as copain.

Today, though, I think that the English language optimizes for different cultural outcomes. Anglo-Saxon cultures have an easy time having many shallow friendships that power larger, more interconnected networks, for example. We also are more easy-going about doing business with one another than the French, but here I'll admit I may be stretching a bit.

Despite that there's nothing wrong with lacking the concepts codified easily for our use, we should try to focus more on knowing our true friends from our friends, and then living our life differently as a result. Pursuing depth with those special individuals with whom you have a real connection is bound to be more rewarding and fulfilling--the coconut--than otherwise.

But further, our time with others is scarce, and in ways we forget in the moment. As a friend of Tom Tunguz captures with a great phrase, We are lent into each other's keeping. Life puts us into contact with someone for a brief and unpredictable period of time before putting us out of touch again once more. We should be more thoughtful with the time that life does permit us to share with others while we can, and the mental models codified by the French ami and copain should help us better do that.