what do boards people think of people from paris/france

milehip1

Just back from the Alps, great food/scenery, the French people i spoke to and dealt with were A1 and their women have a certian je n'ai sais quoi.
Deffo be back.

netwhizkid

I met a French student from Paris who was friends with my sister when we were younger and she was the nicest (and very attractive) girl you could ask for, She left me with a really good impression of French people. I think that French women they way they speak english have one of the sexiest accents in the world, to hear a beautiful French women speak English adds to the charm!

My view of France in general is:

Bad Cars, bad design and worse build quality.
Great food and wine, very laid back culture.
Liberal in the extreme, it is practically a socialist country
Very rebelious, if Sarko tried a NAMAesque robbery his head would be in a basket
Multicultural society which has damaged France highly, far too many immigrants and the French are a minority in certain districts/

Nice women:rolleyes:

whatdoicare

People from Paris are lovely in general. I have a few friends from the area and they don't have any better than thou attitude (none that I noticed anyway). It's all just a stereotype IMO.

Dudess

netwhizkid wrote: »

I met a French student from Paris who was friends with my sister when we were younger and she was the nicest (and very attractive) girl you could ask for, She left me with a really good impression of French people. I think that French women they way they speak english have one of the sexiest accents in the world, to hear a beautiful French women speak English adds to the charm!

My view of France in general is:

Bad Cars, bad design and worse build quality.
Great food and wine, very laid back culture.
Liberal in the extreme, it is practically a socialist country
Very rebelious, if Sarko tried a NAMAesque robbery his head would be in a basket
Multicultural society which has damaged France highly, far too many immigrants and the French are a minority in certain districts/

Nice women:rolleyes:

Actually France is considered a generally rather intolerant society when it comes to immigration. Assimilation is favoured over multiculturalism - "our way or you're on your own" which has led to ghettoisation.

ejmaztec

caseyann wrote: »

^^^^ yeah but when they hear you are Irish different story



Cool nice people

But once they've assumed that you're English, and told you to fuck off, the damage is done.:P

FutureTaoiseach

Dudess wrote: »

Actually France is considered a generally rather intolerant society when it comes to immigration. Assimilation is favoured over multiculturalism - "our way or you're on your own" which has led to ghettoisation.

I look at it differently. True assimilationism is incompatible with ghettoisation. They talk the talk but don't walk the walk. If cities are effectively segregated along ethnic-lines, then you don't get assimilation. The US is an example of a society where assimilation actually occurs, with 80% saying they can only speak English in a poll I saw some years back.

Multiculturalism is not the same as immigration, and attitudes to it should not be confused with attitudes to immigration. For a society to be cohesive, it has to have common values and a common focus of loyality to the State. The French model has failed but not because it claims to be assimilationist - but rather, because it has not practiced what it preached. Planning policies should aim to maximise social-interaction between newcomer and native. That way, a "them an us" mentality isn't allowed to take root. Western values like democracy and women's rights are ones we should try to cultivate in newcomers, and citizenship-tests should play a role in that. Cultural-relativism and Political-Correctness should not blind us to the fact that whatever our faults, the West is more liberal on these issues than much of the developing world.

Dudess

Well I'd far from subscribe to the "genital mutilation is part of their culture, leave them alone!" point of view, but forcing e.g. secularism on people is only going to cause discontent.

FutureTaoiseach

Dudess wrote: »

Well I'd far from subscribe to the "genital mutilation is part of their culture, leave them alone!" point of view, but forcing e.g. secularism on people is only going to cause discontent.

Secularism has been the cultural trend in Europe since the Enlightenment (1700s). Do we want to go back to the way Europe was before then?

Dudess

No, I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm just saying I believe a person has the right to practise their religion. To take that away from them, as part of that society's tolerant, liberal agenda... would be rather ironic.

FutureTaoiseach

I don't think the State should take away someone's right to practice their religion in a mainstream way. But the State needs to be separated from religion because history teaches us that persecution otherwise can result.

Piste

I LOVE France and French! When I was in Barcelona I had a little too much black absinthe and practically killed a couple of French people with love, rambling in garbled French about how much I love France and how nice the French are. The South of France is really beautiful and the people are so friendly and welcoming, thoug I have found Parisiens to be a little aloof.

Maximilian

Lot of great things about France but Parisians are so far up their own ass I'm surprised they don't choke to death on their own heads.

Even the tone of the OP's question is typical (although I suspect he or she is pretty young): Hey I'm French - how awesome are we?

Every time I read a thread on AH I wish I had stayed away.

Tyler MacDurden

Je suis un fan assidu du cinema francais, notamment le mouvement Nouvelle Vague. Voila un un bel exemple:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4EjX_bywCU

Dave03

Just back from France and i gotta say Paris is a pretty impressive city! Sublime architecture and a solid transport system, easy to navigate and plenty there to suit everyone's tastes!!

Piste

Gosh I really want to go back to France

Claasman

I know a few french people, they are sound out. the are all from the countryside and dont have much time for the folk in paris though...its like a much stronger version of the culchie~jackeen thing here

4zn76tysfajdxp

I've never been, but my brother lives in Paris and he thinks it's alright. Sounds fine to me.


*Shrug*

stovelid

OK for surrender monkeys I guess.

Plus points for that dapper, dirty old geezer look that Sarkozy does so well when you see him with the missus.

emeraldstar

I don't actually tend to think of them a whole lot..


I know one French woman who lives near me at home. She is a bit of a bitch but I wouldn't presume to think every French person is therefore. Did French in college and the French lecturers/tutors tended to be either very very nice or very very bitchy/arrogant/obnoxious, with very very weird as a middle ground.

The French, they're grand I guess.

stovelid

emeraldstar wrote: »

and the French lecturers/tutors tended to be either very very nice or very very bitchy/arrogant/obnoxious, with very very weird as a middle ground.
.

Human, in other words.

Whiskey Devil

A great bunch of lads.

Monkey61

Cheese eating surrender monkeys.

I wasn't a big fan of Paris and have to say that most of the Parisians I met were very dismissive of my (I thought rather decent) attempts to speak French. Never once spoke English but was still treated fairly rudely by shopkeepers and the like.

Quite a filthy city and not at all what I was expecting. Seemed quite unsafe too.

BUT, Disneyland is so magnificent that I will be returning this year and possibly twice every year for the rest of my life until I get sick of Space Mountain 2 (which will be never)!

Vive la France.

luckylucky

stovelid wrote: »

OK for surrender monkeys I guess.

Monkey61 wrote: »

Cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Pretty sick of seeing this sort of thoughtless remark from some Irish people towards French, at best it just seems like something you picked up off some UK pals. You try a few million Germans on the doorsteps of Dublin and see how brave you feel. We were pretty good at the whole surrender lark ourselves after all. This whole anti-French thing which seems to have become popular in certain circles is an import from our neighbour and should have no place here. It's Britain which has had issues with France in the past not Ireland.

stovelid

luckylucky wrote: »

Pretty sick of seeing this sort of thoughtless remark from some Irish people towards French, at best it just seems like something you picked up off some UK pals. .

I'm really sorry for the surrender-monkey epithet. It was pretty remiss of me to omit the cheese-eating prefix.

luckylucky

stovelid wrote: »

It was pretty remiss of me to omit the cheese-eating prefix.

Yeah it was. If you're going to go for thoughtless unoriginal imported cliches you might as well go to whole hog after all :rolleyes:

stovelid

luckylucky wrote: »

Yeah it was. If you're going to go for thoughtless unoriginal imported cliches you might as well go to whole hog after all :rolleyes:

You're making me feel bad about the quality of my cliches now.

I knew I should have stayed in daft Sartre polo-neck/smelly onion-ring/Gauloise territory.

luckylucky

stovelid wrote: »

I knew I should have stayed in daft Sartre polo-neck/smelly onion-ring/Gauloise territory.

Now yer talking :P.

Anyone else have doubts btw about OP's supposed Frenchness - if anything he seems to be doing his best to turn us off French people.

brummytom

luckylucky wrote: »

Now yer talking :P.

Anyone else have doubts btw about OP's supposed Frenchness - if anything he seems to be doing his best to turn us off French people.

Nope, he seems exactly like a Frenchman

ejmaztec

luckylucky wrote: »

Pretty sick of seeing this sort of thoughtless remark from some Irish people towards French, at best it just seems like something you picked up off some UK pals. You try a few million Germans on the doorsteps of Dublin and see how brave you feel. We were pretty good at the whole surrender lark ourselves after all. This whole anti-French thing which seems to have become popular in certain circles is an import from our neighbour and should have no place here. It's Britain which has had issues with France in the past not Ireland.

Definitely double standards, sticking it to the Brits, and at the same time criticising someone for sticking it to the French.:P

luckylucky

ejmaztec wrote: »

Definitely double standards, sticking it to the Brits, and at the same time criticising someone for sticking it to the French.:P

Where exactly am I sticking it to the Brits?

brummytom

*backs away slowly*

ejmaztec

luckylucky wrote: »

Where exactly am I sticking it to the Brits?

Read your post, which I quoted, and study it in great detail.

luckylucky

ejmaztec wrote: »

Read your post, which I quoted, and study it in great detail.

lol so basically you can't show because no criticism exists.

And since I made the post I think I know exactly what I meant a lot better than you!

So you just assumed there was some implied criticism.

Ok - just to further debunk your assumption. In my post I said "It's Britain which has had issues with France in the past not Ireland."

This is true. Britain and France have been ememies many times in the past and in certain elements in both countries there still exists enmities to this day. It shouldn't be that way but it's a bit more understandable than Irish people feeling this way towards the French. I have a lot of English friends here who don't like the French because of the way they have been treated in France and from their point of view I can understand and empathise. I totally disagree with anybody being treated badly just because of what country they are from.

ejmaztec wrote: »

Definitely double standards, sticking it to the Brits, and at the same time criticising someone for sticking it to the French.:P

Also I have no problem whatsoever in Irish people criticising France or French people if they have good reason from their own experience but just wish they wouldn't copy-cat cliches from across the water. Is the 'Surrender monkey' not something that came from across the water? And is saying that it is sticking to the Brits!?
If the surrender monkey is something that originated here (which I'm 99% sure it didn't) then that would really be pot calling the kettle black.

ejmaztec

luckylucky wrote: »

lol so basically you can't show because no criticism exists.

And since I made the post I think I know exactly what I meant a lot better than you!

So you just assumed there was some implied criticism.

Ok - just to further debunk your assumption. In my post I said "It's Britain which has had issues with France in the past not Ireland."

This is true. Britain and France have been ememies many times in the past and in certain elements in both countries there still exists enmities to this day. It shouldn't be that way but it's a bit more understandable than Irish people feeling this way towards the French. I have a lot of English friends here who don't like the French because of the way they have been treated in France and from their point of view I can understand and empathise. I totally disagree with anybody being treated badly just because of what country they are from.



Also I have no problem whatsoever in Irish people criticising France or French people if they have good reason from their own experience but just wish they wouldn't copy-cat cliches from across the water. Is the 'Surrender monkey' not something that came from across the watrer? And is saying that it is sticking to the Brits!?
If the surrender monkey is something that originated here (which I'm 99% sure it didn't) then that would really be pot calling the kettle black.

Which water are you referring to, because I don't think the phrase originated across the Irish Sea?

You're stereotyping, and criticising people for doing the same.

brummytom

What makes you think British people don't like the French?
We may have been 'enemies'; but we were allies in two world wars and worked together to build an under-water rail - How exactly are we still enemies?

French people are stereotyped as arrogant, smelly etc. Irish are stereotyped as laid back and pissed. The English are seen as snooty and uptight. They're just stupid stereotypes. Who cares.


Oh, and as far as I know, 'cheese-eating surrender monkies' is an American phrase, not a British one.

luckylucky

ejmaztec wrote: »

Which water are you referring to, because I don't think the phrase originated across the Irish Sea?

You're stereotyping, and criticising people for doing the same.

Well I lived in England for a good few years and heard the phrase 'Cheese eating surrdender monkeys' on more than one occasion so i assumed it originated there. Maybe I assumed wrongly and it came from America and they borrowed the phrase. Either way it's almost definitely an imported phrase to Ireland. Not sure where exactly I'm meant to be doing stereotyping. It's true that Francophobia has stronger roots in Britain than it does in Ireland (not saying for 1 minute that all British are Anti-French) If you think me even bringing the Brits into this was wrong, well at a stretch I can see why you might think this. Either way we have less reason historically at least to be annoyed or dislike the French than the British do and perhaps to a lesser extent America.

I wasn't criticising people so much for stereotyping - more criticising them for being unoriginal and borrowing another country's (be it Britain, America or any other country) cliched stereotyped phraseology.

If you think i was somehow sticking it to the Brits then I can assure you it wasn't my intention. My wife is a Brit and a load of my friends are Brits. In fact if anything I'd say I'm an anglophile, that doesn't mean I'm one of them though!

luckylucky

brummytom wrote: »

What makes you think British people don't like the French?

Some don't - as clearly some Irish don't either. I don't think that all British people dislike the French. tbh Tom I reckon this attitude is on the way out and that's a good thing.

brummytom wrote: »

Irish are stereotyped as laid back and pissed.

see some stereotypes are true.

brummytom wrote: »

'cheese-eating surrender monkies' is an American phrase, not a British one.

Well you learn something new everyday, apologies for my assumption (some people can apologise for wrong assumptions ) then

ejmaztec

brummytom wrote: »

What makes you think British people don't like the French?
We may have been 'enemies'; but we were allies in two world wars and worked together to build an under-water rail - How exactly are we still enemies?

French people are stereotyped as arrogant, smelly etc. Irish are stereotyped as laid back and pissed. The English are seen as snooty and uptight. They're just stupid stereotypes. Who cares.


Oh, and as far as I know, 'cheese-eating surrender monkies' is an American phrase, not a British one.

It was apparently first used in an episode of The Simpsons, which is a bit strange, given that every single American loves the French (I could be wrong about that, and will leave it others to correct my assumption).

scarymoon1

we used to holiday alot in france when i was younger and we never met any unfriendly french! Once we were lost in the car looking for my parents friends house, we asked this couple, they said follow us ( in french) we must have been driving for about 10-15 mins following them - they brought us right to the street. 2 years ago in paris with an ex - we were late for the airport going home and went to the wrong place to get the bus - asked directions on street in bad french- people tried to help and eventually a taxi man brought us up one way streets even (scary but we made the flight ) and flew it to get us to the place - we were in such a rush we forget to tip him! But IMO the fench are lovely

briany

ejmaztec wrote: »

It was apparently first used in an episode of The Simpsons, which is a bit strange, given that every single American loves the French (I could be wrong about that, and will leave it others to correct my assumption).

Yeah it was used by Groundskeeper Willy, so it is technically a Scottish phrase and henceforth a British one.

ejmaztec

briany wrote: »

Yeah it was used by Groundskeeper Willy, so it is technically a Scottish phrase and henceforth a British one.

I'll break it to you gently, but the Simpsons cartoon characters aren't real, and the scripts are written by Americans. I'm sorry that I destroyed your fantasy, and tore your world apart, but I promise that I won't do it again.:P:pac:

Havermeyer

Snooty, wine loving surrender monkeys.

briany

ejmaztec wrote: »

I'll break it to you gently, but the Simpsons cartoon characters aren't real, and the scripts are written by Americans. I'm sorry that I destroyed your fantasy, and tore your world apart, but I promise that I won't do it again.:P:pac:

And here was me wondering why they all had jaundice....:rolleyes:

emeraldstar

stovelid wrote: »

Human, in other words.

Yup, my point.

mickdw

Medievalist wrote: »

stupid right-hand drive banger taking my space...:mad:

So he didnt bring a french car over so:D

BroomBurner

They don't seem to like non-French wines.

catbear

I've only visited Paris once and I'd like to return again but there are many other cities in Europe that I'd personally prefer. I was there as a tourist so I can not comment about the lifestyle etc.. but I loved using the metro.

I had apprehensions about going because of a french speaking Canadian friends experience. She ethnically Korean but had fluent French, she was shocked by people insulting her to face in French and then being all nicre in English thinking that she did not understand, but it was extremely upsetting.

I had no problems there but then I'm not asian.

LD 50

No offence, but I hate the french. Bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Ponster

dubois90 wrote: »

we have the style, the best city in the world and well basically everything so whats your view on Parisians?

If you count Parisians as people who were born in Paris then you'd be surprised to find that there are very few of them. Less than 25% of the population of Paris have actually been born in Paris (me included).

Medievalist

mickdw wrote: »

So he didnt bring a french car over so:D

Er...yea...right hand side of the road....left hand....right...ahem....:P

...more wine....