This is an issue for Yanks in France.

How many kisses to give to someone you are meeting again … or meeting for the first time?

Outsiders can’t be expected to get it right, but they risk being judged by locals for their performance on the bisous (French for “kisses”) front. It’s at least as complicated as a fraternity handshake.

At least one Englishman seems to have lost his cool over the difficulties of getting right la bise — the phrase given to a single kiss as well as to the process of meeting.

Check the embedded video at this site, and be forewarned the Englishman is going to drop some eff bombs.

But the premise is valid: Just stopping by for a beer at the neighborhood bar produces a minefield of potential problems, plus lots of social (and performance) anxiety.

My experience has been that, in the north of France, including Paris, one kiss on each cheek is fine. But it can be three or even four, further south — such as where we are now, near the town of Pezenas in the Languedoc.

Thankfully, I am not a social person, which limits my exposure to rooms full of French men and women, and the series of questions that follows.

(“Who to kiss? Do I really have to do it before I have my beer? Do I have to do it again on the way out? Women, only after the first introduction is followed by a handshake? Men … when?”)

Because I am not greeting the French on a social basis, I can get away with this: Wait for the French person to decide, and just follow along.

If the person does not lean in, and a hand comes up … shake it and consider yourself lucky.

If the person leans it, he or she (as the native) will decide what side of the face the (mostly) “air” kisses begins, and then you go back and forth until the local person is done. After two, or (maybe) four, from Lyon on south.

(The video notes another potential problem; if both people are wearing glasses, it could cause a collision and perhaps somebody’s glasses on the floor.)

So, yes, this is a topic you can waste a lot of energy on as you size it up.

Though, we must concede, the hug seems to be slowly replacing the handshake as a greeting in the U.S., so “saying hello” is getting more complicated there, too.

I’m fine with a nice firm handshake for any occasion. But as the outsider, you need to at least try the “when in Rome” thing …

However it works out, I would advocate not saying it with bursts of four-letter words, as our video-link guy does.