It's amazing the number of times this comes up in conversation. Those Wacky Frenchmen. No, that's not quite it. Those annoying, arrogant, self-important Frenchmen. THAT'S more like it.
French is the Language of Diplomacy. - Yeah right. Maybe 200+ years ago, when you had to walk through France to get from one country to another. Hell, I could do a whole page on French language. English is the language of Aviation, right? But for some stupid reason the French forced all the weather abbreviations to be based on French words, so there is absolutely no mnemonic value to them. And there is always their bigotry towards any foreigner who can't speak French perfectly, but then, they're bigoted against any foreign words "polluting" their language. We are all such filthy vermin, I guess, with our non-french languages. It's so much better to say "machine for sending pictures long distances" than "television." no?
Oh, and while I'm mentioning television, here's another reason: SECAM. "Let's use a system nobody else in Europe uses so that none of their filthy non-french programs can be viewed in our pristine country."
"Ze Fiftieth Anniversary of ze bombing of Hiroshima is ze PERFECT day to conduct an underwater Nuclear test in the South Seas. So what if the rest of the western world has agreed to stop testing. WE do not have to. We are an important Nuclear Superpower. Really. We are!"
"Only WE had the nerve to do anything about those annoying Green Peace lunatics." - Actually, they might have something there.
"What is wrong with Libya as a trading partner? They are not sponsoring terrorists on French soil. We don't care if you're our allies. Fly your jets around the long way."
"Say, Argentina, those Exocet missiles we sold you sure worked well on those British ships, no?"
"Fah! you Americans with your noble and heroic revolution. Let us French show you how it is done!"
WWI "The Germans are coming! Mommy!"
Treaty of Versailles "Hah! We've beaten you Germans, you're going to pay, and pay, and pay! We will make sure you suffer under our economic sanctions!"
WWII "The Germans are coming! Mommy!" "Hey, if we collaborate, you won't beat us up too much, no?"
The name of International Space Station was changed from the name Ronald Reagan gave it, "Freedom", because the French objected that it sounded too "American". - Take a moment to think of the implications of that.
A correspondent reports that the French actually have a law that you may not have any English in your Company name, or in any advertising.
Two Words: Jerry Lewis.
One Word: Mimes. - Of course, Marcel Marceau was simply amazing in his role as Professor Ping in Barbarella, the finest Jane Fonda movie of all time.
This goodie taken from the UPI, admittedly without permission.
PARIS, March 6 (UPI) -- The French Ministry of Finance announced Monday it has banned from official French civil service use many common English language business words such as "start-up" and "e-mail."
The goal, according to a detailed ministry statement issued Monday is to limit the spread of the English language throughout the Internet.
The ministry last year established seven different committees to search out and substitute with French translations as many widely accepted anglo computer terms as possible.
The ministry disclosed Monday that government documents and civil servants have been directed to use the phrase a "jeune pousse" (a young plant) for "start-up" and use the phrase "courrier electronique" for "e-mail," in all official government communications.
The announcement comes as two French newspapers -- Liberation and Le Monde -- noted last week that French President Chirac often used anglo computer or finance terms.
Last week he referred to some companies as "les start-ups" and to their managers as "les start-upistes."
Chirac had been touring a building in Paris known as Republic Alley, where many young French Internet firms are located.
Explaining the project to turn the anglo computer phrases into French, the head of the ministry's terminology committee, Jean Saint-Geours, told French radio Monday: "Of course it is not possible for the State to dictate phrases for other persons. But, for the entire nation, it is important everyone should talk the same language."
There are an estimated 4.5 million French people who use the Internet, a figure expected to rise to 23 million in 2002.
Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
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This goodie taken from the The London Times, admittedly without permission. I don't know if the link below to the original article will eventually expire, so I've copied the text.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,20-53278,00.html
TUESDAY DECEMBER 19 2000
FROM ADAM SAGE IN PARIS
FRENCH authorities have made another attempt to roll back the tide of cultural globalization by banning Digital Video Discs (DVDs) imported from North America.
Specialists say that the Government is facing certain defeat, with fans able to order DVDs of American films via the Internet.
Catherine Tasca, the Culture Minister, has signed a decree making it illegal to import and sell DVDs from the USA or Canada for the six-month period that precedes their release on the French cinema circuit. Supporters of the ban say it will protect French movie houses threatened by the rising number of film-lovers who stay at home to watch the high quality recordings.
They point out that under the present law, DVD versions of American films often go on sale in shops in France before they reach the big screen.
DVDs are selling faster in France than in any other European country, with the total set to reach 13 million this year. Many are imported directly from America before they are officially distributed.
In an editorial yesterday, the newspaper Libération said that fans could order DVDs from the Internet and receive them by post. Soon they would be able to download DVDs directly from the Web, it said. "It is vain to think, as Mme Tasca does, that we can put up regulatory Maginot lines to cut up an increasingly global market."
- Yup, leave it to the French to resort to the discredited policy of Protectionism in order to protect an industry and shield their fragile culture from outside influences. Gee, I would have thought that Frenchmen satisfying their thirst for western films via DVD would help keep those films out of the theaters, leaving more venues for French Films. Oh yeah, I forgot. French Films SUCK, which is why only liberal leftist pseudo-intellectuals watch them at art-house theaters, so they can pretend to like them and scoff and more sensible people. Oh, and notice that it's government restrictions they resort to, rather than trying to eliminate whatever barrier it is that delays the appearance in French Theaters until after the DVD's come out. Talk about inverted thinking. I wonder how long before they start inspecting the mail for "contraband" DVDs?
10/5/2003 For a time, thanks to the war, I was a bit too disheartened to update this page. There's just too much hypocrisy when the same people saying the US was in it for the oil didn't seem to mind TotalFinaElf's gargantuan contracts with Saddam, which meant it was in the state's best interests to leave Saddam in power, and those children in prison, and all the other nastiness that went down in Iraq. But at last, I've found something else trivial, yet damning about the French to add to this page.
PARIS (AFP) - The city of Paris made an honorary citizen of celebrated US death row inmate and black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, sentenced to die for the 1981 murder of a white Philadelphia policeman.
It is the first time Paris has bestowed the honor since Pablo Picasso was made honorary citizen in 1971, Socialist mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe told an audience of 200 people, taking the occasion to attack the "barbarity" of the death penalty.
Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther civil rights activist and journalist who has maintained his innocence, had his death sentence overturned in December of 2001 but that decision is currently on appeal.
In attacking the "barbarity called the death penalty," the mayor said "as long as there is a place on this planet where one can be killed in the name of the community, we haven't finished our work."
Raising his fist in a sign of solidarity, Delanoe then shouted "Mumia is a Parisian!" as the crowd of mostly-leftist activists cheered and applauded.
Black activist Angela Davis, a former member of the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, hailed the "profound sense of humanity" of Abu-Jamal, attacking American "unilateralism" and racist attacks against immigrants.
The movement to free Abu-Jamal "takes on a new sense in face of American unilateralism, the aggression against the Iraqi people and the racist attacks against immigrants which can only further gnaw away at the vestiges of democracy in the United States," Davis, a professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz, said.
Abu-Jamal, sentenced to death 21 years ago for the murder of Daniel Faulkner, has always insisted he was innocent, and scores of movements and organizations have sprung up around the world in his defense.
His opponents view him as an unrepentant murderer.
His case has provoked particularly vivid debate in France, which abolished the death penalty in 1981. French school children are required to study the case as part of their education.
Simply brilliant. The article doesn't mention that Faulkner merely pulled him over for a traffic stop. It doesn't mention Faulkner's wife and children, deprived of their father, and for what? To get out of a traffic ticket? In exchange for life in prison for murder. What a stupid, stupid thing to do.
And why do we hear anything about this raving loon? Why does he merit ANY media attention? He should be kept in his cell and cut off from the world like every other prisoner on death row.
But he does serve one purpose. Any leftist loon you hear who takes up his cause also informs you that there's no point in trying to talk sense to him. It's one of nature's warning signs.