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On January 21 2012 23:29 Kukaracha wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2012 23:23 Stratos_speAr wrote:On January 21 2012 23:21 Kukaracha wrote:On January 21 2012 23:02 Euronyme wrote:On January 21 2012 22:51 Kukaracha wrote:On January 21 2012 22:49 Euronyme wrote:On January 21 2012 22:45 Kukaracha wrote:On January 21 2012 21:35 Euronyme wrote:
Americans envy the French in every way possible, the English have them as rivals.
There are also some irritation left as the French practically didn't fight in WW2, even though they practically caused it. Open a history book, maybe? What do you disagree with? French causing WW2 maybe? I mean, it's wrong on so many levels I feel someone is trying to tell me the earth was square. Sure, France lost, plainly and simply, the war. But how is that the cause of the war itself? What kind of odd twisted logic is this? Edit: I mean, shall I remind you that Swede was neutral during the conflict and collaborated with the Wehrmach in many occasions? Peace of versailles. The massive debt put on Germany after WW1 was illadviced, and caused a massive meltdown of the German economy that lasted until WW2 basically. That combined with the French pillage made Hitler's promise of revenge popular enough to rise to power. The lust for revenge was central in Hitler's ideology, and is mainly what made it so popular. Well tell me, was this a decision made by the French people, a consequence of the behaviour of the French army, or simply a consequence of Clemenceau's political views, and his alone? There was a sizable French population that were anti-German to the point where they wanted France to immediately go back to war with the Germans even prior to WWI. They were very, very bitter about the Franco-Prussian War. This raises an interesting point; if the french caused WW2, then didn't the germans push them to do so by provoking France into a war simply to... unify Germany (1870)? See where this kind of logic takes you?
It still leads back to France for trying to prevent Germany from unifying =p
This thread is just beyond fucking stupid though:
Let's use terrible inductive reasoning to generalize an attribute we have observed in a small sample size of a population to a general population of hundreds of millions, then argue about what motivates the attribute. Just stupid.
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On January 22 2012 02:47 Jibba wrote:Just so people are aware, there's a difference between the jokes people are making about running away, and really stupid serious lines like: That's the reason for the warning.
TBH, I don't see how the jokes about running are better. It's basically an invitation to get insulted (i.e trolling or baiting).
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On January 22 2012 02:49 exog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2012 02:47 Jibba wrote:Just so people are aware, there's a difference between the jokes people are making about running away, and really stupid serious lines like: Reality Check: If it wasn't for us and USA, they would be speaking German. That's the reason for the warning. Its probably true. Its very possible that the allies would have lost in europe without the americans.
If it wasn't for the the Americans, we would speak Russian now, not German.
The soviets were already winning their front pretty hard by the time the allies created the western front.
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What makes many germans have suspect feelings about France:
-Sarkozy who behaves like a cowboy.
-(Maybe just in my case) A left-party opposition which is full of egoists who refuse to work together, making conservative Jospin and right-wing Le Pen being the candidates for 2nd round of presidential elections in 2002, despite an overall left majority.
-French people striking for fun.
-You have Eurodisney, we don't.
-European Union having english and french as main languages, despite more (native) german-speakers than francophones in the Union.
-In german schools you are basically forced to learn french (at "higher" schools), unless you choose Latin or your school happens to offer another language. However, most germans would prefer to learn/have learned spanish or, to a lesser degree, italian. Spanish is seen as a world-language, whereas french loks like a language who becomes less and less important.
-French courses in school are basically 50% about nazi-occupied france, after you learned grammatics and such. Not a topic that invkoes the most positive feelings.
-Guess how german children feel when they hear stories about french schools were learning foreign languages is said to be optional (don't know whether this is true).
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On January 22 2012 02:58 tyr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2012 02:49 exog wrote:On January 22 2012 02:47 Jibba wrote:Just so people are aware, there's a difference between the jokes people are making about running away, and really stupid serious lines like: Reality Check: If it wasn't for us and USA, they would be speaking German. That's the reason for the warning. Its probably true. Its very possible that the allies would have lost in europe without the americans. If it wasn't for the the Americans, we would speak Russian now, not German. The soviets were already winning their front pretty hard by the time the allies created the western front.
The combine forces of all Euro countries could have easily beat Russia.
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On January 22 2012 02:58 tyr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2012 02:49 exog wrote:On January 22 2012 02:47 Jibba wrote:Just so people are aware, there's a difference between the jokes people are making about running away, and really stupid serious lines like: Reality Check: If it wasn't for us and USA, they would be speaking German. That's the reason for the warning. Its probably true. Its very possible that the allies would have lost in europe without the americans. If it wasn't for the the Americans, we would speak Russian now, not German. The soviets were already winning their front pretty hard by the time the allies created the western front.
You're perpetuating stupidity by continuing the chain of crystal-ball predictions of alternate history as legitimate arguments.
On January 22 2012 03:00 Eiaco wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2012 02:58 tyr wrote:On January 22 2012 02:49 exog wrote:On January 22 2012 02:47 Jibba wrote:Just so people are aware, there's a difference between the jokes people are making about running away, and really stupid serious lines like: Reality Check: If it wasn't for us and USA, they would be speaking German. That's the reason for the warning. Its probably true. Its very possible that the allies would have lost in europe without the americans. If it wasn't for the the Americans, we would speak Russian now, not German. The soviets were already winning their front pretty hard by the time the allies created the western front. The combine forces of all Euro countries could have easily beat Russia.
So are you.
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If there's one thing I've learned from this thread, it's that other European countries have more beef with France than the US ever has.
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-French courses in school are basically 50% about nazi-occupied france, after you learned grammatics and such. Not a topic that invkoes the most positive feelings.
In fairness, history classes in the UK and US also devote a significant portion to the Nazis and how noble and valiant they were to end Hitler.
As some commenters are noting, they don't talk so much about the priors leading to World War I or how the Allies bungled the Treaty of Versailles by levying impossible and unfair burdens on Germany. Not many people put together the bizarre puzzle of Yugoslavia, that World War I was started after a Serb shot Archduke Ferdinand because he wanted Serbia and Bosnia to be one nation, while in the 90s the Serbs and Bosnians would be accusing each other of genocide.
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In the 90's i had the chance to take part in a pupil-exchange with france. It was great and since then i really like the french people. I think the majority of the Germans and French share many beliefs on how a country should be run and how the government should take care of it's people. I also admire them for fighting for their social rights. Many people make fun of the strikes, i think it's great and should be done in more countries. I like how things turned out after all the shit between our countries in the early in 20th century.
On the other hand i can confirm that many french people behave like assholes when abroad. I worked in hospitality in GB for a year and they were some of the worst customers. But Germans and Americans were no better...
France jokes are funny though and you shouldn't take em all so serious. (My Favorite "There's only one way to france! On tank chains.") You know how much shit you have to take as a German sometimes? As long as it's in good fun, it's fine.
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United States22883 Posts
On January 22 2012 03:07 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +-French courses in school are basically 50% about nazi-occupied france, after you learned grammatics and such. Not a topic that invkoes the most positive feelings. In fairness, history classes in the UK and US also devote a significant portion to the Nazis and how noble and valiant they were to end Hitler. As some commenters are noting, they don't talk so much about the priors leading to World War I or how the Allies bungled the Treaty of Versailles by levying impossible and unfair burdens on Germany. Not many people put together the bizarre puzzle of Yugoslavia, that World War I was started after a Serb shot Archduke Ferdinand because he wanted Serbia and Bosnia to be one nation, while in the 90s the Serbs and Bosnians would be accusing each other of genocide.
The teaching of history is almost universally bad at the grade school level. Valiant myths and date memorization, rather than context. The death of the Archduke was usually cited as the main reason for WWI in my schools, without any attention being given to the progressive build up of tension between France and Prussia.
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On January 22 2012 02:59 Mafe wrote:
What makes many germans have suspect feelings about France:
-Sarkozy who behaves like a cowboy.
-(Maybe just in my case) A left-party opposition which is full of egoists who refuse to work together, making conservative Jospin and right-wing Le Pen being the candidates for 2nd round of presidential elections in 2002, despite an overall left majority.
-French people striking for fun.
-You have Eurodisney, we don't.
-European Union having english and french as main languages, despite more (native) german-speakers than francophones in the Union.
-In german schools you are basically forced to learn french (at "higher" schools), unless you choose Latin or your school happens to offer another language. However, most germans would prefer to learn/have learned spanish or, to a lesser degree, italian. Spanish is seen as a world-language, whereas french loks like a language who becomes less and less important.
-French courses in school are basically 50% about nazi-occupied france, after you learned grammatics and such. Not a topic that invkoes the most positive feelings.
-Guess how german children feel when they hear stories about french schools were learning foreign languages is said to be optional (don't know whether this is true).
In France you are required to take a first language in the 6th grade (12 years old) and a second one in 8th grade (14 years old). Most people take English as the first and Spanish as the second, however it's not uncommon to have people do German-English. No one does German-Spanish, not learning English is retarded. After you're 18 years old I think you can drop back down to learning one language.
I can safely say that I have almost never met a French person who speaks English fluently (except for teachers obviously). There is one person in my class who comes close actually, but that's because he's half Korean. :p :p
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On January 22 2012 01:42 caradoc wrote:
The reason France bashing exists in the US is because the French government occasionally listens to the population, creating inconveniences for the US administration. France is a western democracy, in fact the FIRST western democracy, so it is harder to sell the idea that it doesn't matter to the American population in the US.
It basically started in earnest when the US was assembling the 'coalition of the willing' in order to invade Iraq in 2002. Although the majority of the populations of most countries worldwide (and ironically, especially those within the coalition) were overwhelmingly against the prospect of their country participating, France was a security council permanent member and a historical US ally, and refused to support the war.
Of course this made the war on false pretexts look bad for the US administration, so they started making up petty insults about how France was inferior in x y z ways to save face, and hide the fact that it was a case of a government listening to the fact that it's population was against the war.
This was a huge media capaign, and almost overnight you'd see every network picking up on the act. Everything from them being lazy, to eating the wrong foods, to being communist, to having no 'entrepeneurial spirit' (presumably an insult to hardcore capitalists). I guess the bashing persisted in some form or another until now.
I just want to posit that communication like this is what leads to prejudice. Person A says that group B is idiotic and makes misleading/false claims. + Show Spoiler +The United States of America declared independence in 1776, French Revolution began in 1789. I'm going to assume that the writer was thinking about the government under the US Constitution when he wrote this, but quite frankly there was more freedom under the Articles of Confederation, and therefore a state could choose to become a pure democracy. Furthermore, there have been no nations that have adopted pure democracies since Athens, and then only within the city. The rest of their empire was technically under democratic rule, but the Athenians would kill the colony if the colony didn't do what Athens wanted. Also France-bashing has been around MUCH longer than the "War on Terror". And the media doesn't really have any agenda except for making money, and France-bashing is considered funny. This is the real reason that late-night comedy shows poke fun at France, not some hidden goal of bringing down the common people.
On second thought, I'm going to hope that this was written satirically. To assume otherwise would lower my IQ...
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I like France 
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On January 22 2012 03:06 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
If there's one thing I've learned from this thread, it's that other European countries have more beef with France than the US ever has.
As a german I can atleast say
THEY STARTED IT!!! When one of the french kings tried to gain power in german states and the screamer defiled the tombs of old german kings and let his soldiers bowl with their bones.
Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!
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On January 22 2012 03:07 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +-French courses in school are basically 50% about nazi-occupied france, after you learned grammatics and such. Not a topic that invkoes the most positive feelings. In fairness, history classes in the UK and US also devote a significant portion to the Nazis and how noble and valiant they were to end Hitler.
I don't know, at the schools I went to, WWII was only covered for about a week in one of my high school classes. I have a feeling most US schools tend to focus on the colonial period, the Revolution and the Civil War; I learned about that shit a dozen times or so.
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I've heard really bad things about how when Americans backpack across Europe and get to France, they get treated really badly. Dunno if its true and doubt it is but it is a pretty radical thing to make up.
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Okay, so the Americans disliking the French (speaking from experience) stems from WWII, where they basically laid down and died. Now a days, It's because the Urban French people, especially from Paris, seem to always act real snooty to American tourists for no good reason. Even though the French people that live in the countryside are nice people and the ones that run the ski resorts and hotels on the mountains are quite hospitable. Again, a couple bad eggs ruins it all.
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On January 22 2012 03:07 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +-French courses in school are basically 50% about nazi-occupied france, after you learned grammatics and such. Not a topic that invkoes the most positive feelings. In fairness, history classes in the UK and US also devote a significant portion to the Nazis and how noble and valiant they were to end Hitler. As some commenters are noting, they don't talk so much about the priors leading to World War I or how the Allies bungled the Treaty of Versailles by levying impossible and unfair burdens on Germany. Not many people put together the bizarre puzzle of Yugoslavia, that World War I was started after a Serb shot Archduke Ferdinand because he wanted Serbia and Bosnia to be one nation, while in the 90s the Serbs and Bosnians would be accusing each other of genocide.
We also have history classes, really! and we are reading books in our german courses, guess which ones can't miss. My point was, the heavy focus on nazi-occupied/vichy France in french courses seemed like an overkill to me.3 books I had to read for my french courses, and all of them where about these years of french history.
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What an awesome thread.
I have yet to read one interesting post.
That's quite a performance considering its length.
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to quote our beloved John Cleese: " Its just wrong beeing french" :D:D:D
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EPT
