viva la france

Not necessarily true, stereotypes may have a basis in truth but they tend to be dramatically overblown and this can range from the amusing: The stereotype of us Scots as haggis eating, kilt-wearing, caber tossing skinflints with red hair to the pervasive and disturbing such as stereotyping the attitudes of people purely based on the region of the world they inhabit. To dissect the Scottish example: Yes it is true that haggis is our supposed national dish but it is unlikely that most Scots have one more than once a year - if that. Kilts are considered to be our national dress but are in truth only worn at weddings and other occasions of import and even then not by all of the male guests. The highland games are participated in by very few and their popularity is eclipsed a hundred fold by sports such as football, rugby, tennis etc. We are known for being somewhat tight with our money but I wager that the quantity of money owed on average by each Scot is a very considerable number. Red hair - yes it does seem that there is an increased propensity towards red hair amongst those of Scottish and Irish stock in particular but I doubt the number is anything greater than 1 in 20 and even then it's a push I reckon.

All of the components of that stereotype have a basis in truth, but only in the loosest sense possible, I myself have never tasted haggis, have worn a kilt once in my life (at age 6), have never participated in any traditional Scottish physical pastimes and in fact my favourite sport is baseball, I'm way too free with my money given my financial constraints and I have brown hair. Just because I chose an absurd example does not in fact mean that many widely accepted stereotypes are not in their own ways equally absurd.

Personally I've enjoyed the facility that Guild Wars offers in allowing me to meet people of different backgrounds who I have little chance of encountering in real life. The best group I was in consisted of five Poles (guild mates IIRC), one German, one French person and myself, most spoke only broken English but it wasn't a problem at all and everyone made an effort to communicate effectively despite the language barrier so no I have never found any of the French players particularly unwilling to integrate a non-French speaker like myself into a group.

When I was in scotland, you could buy haggis in almost every supermarket.
I even found vegetarien haggis for sale.
So people seem to eat it more than once a year, unless the haggis is in the shelves just to show tourists that they'are in scotland.

Germans, btw. eat tons of Sauerkraut, and Sauerkraut only.
Along with Bratwurst and Weißbier.

That would work if people would stay in their districts, which they don't.
But you're right about meeting people. Being in the english-district most of the time I never met so many different people from different countries ever.

well, we english used to fight everyone.

and on the french people ignore people who don't speak perfect french matter... i have to admit to ignoring 1337 speakers quite a bit as well...

anyway we know the stereotypes. English are arrogant, french are insular, spanish are lazy, italians are old ( ), germans are over serious and americans are all, every single one arrogant, insular, lazy, fat, and sods.

funnily enough in a rescent survay the french described the english as arrogant and stiff and the english described the french as arrogant and unserious. i had a laugh at that.

And every now and then comes something like the Gomery Inquiry that proves it right... *shudders*

/me looks over my shoulder

On a recent cycling trip to France for the Tour de France, I found the french in my experience to be incredibly polite and generous. Everyone I said hi to with my limited 5-word French vocabulary made great effort to keep the communication going. I had heard the stereotypes of course, but I go anywhere with an open mind. I had a wonderful time and can say with certainty I wish to be more fluent when I go back again. I spent all of my time down in Languedoc. Beautiful country. Have to admit my experience would probably have been a bit different in Paris. ^^

The langage problem (I'm french too) is quite understandable : I immagine, if french where the usual international langage, you (english speaker) would certainly translate the usual french words (like "mouse" for "souris") in english, because our langage is a real part of our personnality
I quite sure every non-english speaker (french, italian, spanish, deutch,...) translate such words too.
It's true that french has a high opinion of his historical past, he's proud of it, and piss everybody off with that !
But everyone do the same, perhaps not so often and so loud...

Just as I had such a good time in Florida this summer. I'm pretty certain the experience wouldn't have been as "magical" in Texas.

No, we dont translate terms like mouse or computer.
We use some informatic terms in both languages (monitor/schermo or floppy/dischetto), some italian only (like tastiera for keyboard), some english only (scanner).

But here in Italy there are a lot of different ideas about international words, because during the 20'/40' fascism every single term has been italianized.

And even now, a linguistic discussion can easily fall in a politic debate.
In conclusion, a lot of terms (not informatic only) can be used in both languages.

Btw, many english/american people dont know that hundreds english words arise from latin/italian.

Searching this reply only:
term=termine
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discussion=discussione
politic debate=dibattico politico
conclusion=conclusione
language=lingua


I hope anyone find this interesting.

well. most languages are interelated. all western languages have solid roots in Latin and greek. you can often see the similarities between all european languages.

when you get down to languages like Sanskrit and Mandarin, then you have trouble. almost no relation at all. (the occasional adopted word here and there)

lol. *I* wouldnt have a good time in Texas. :P

Some of my favorite times in gaming though have been online, making friends with players from other countries, overcoming the language barrier as best as our respective fluencies allowed, finding the funny things in common that allowed us through the mechanics of the game to communicate without written language, and then playing the game. Pretty well too I might add. Had an absolute blast in various incarnations of PSO for example, playing on the Japanese servers and earning the trust and friendship of players there.

A little effort towards learning the language and customs of people from other countries goes an awful long ways, and is very very rewarding. To me anyway. Was great fun actually experiencing that in person in France. I should probably venture over to the international districts in GW even though we lack that little, albeit limited, translation feature from PSO that helped to break the ice.

Vive la france*

Just found it ironic on a pro-france topic

hum, there 3 (approximatively) groups of langage in europe :
the mediteranian one (frendh, italian, spanish,...)
the nordic/celte one (german, english, sweden, norway...)
the slave one (all the eastern contries (sorry there are too much for my geographic knowledge...))
this 3 groups are pretty differents, but in each groups, leaning the langage can be quite easy, because many words are common, like french, italian or spanish)
When I say "easy", I mean easy to write or read, not to speak

I too am French (name and family root wise, not nationality) and living in America has not been a pretty experience as far as that goes. Every single person I have ever spoken to that has been to France, says that the French are very friendly and polite. But speak to one proeverythingAmericadoes nomatterwhatRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOkeveryoneelse *pant* person, and all you will hear is shamless trash talk, stereotyping and lies about the French.

With a particular focus on "the French haven't won a war on their own in 200 years, they are weak cowards who surrender", anyone who is educated about world history will simply laugh off these fools. My favorite thing to say is "So you call the French weak for being knocked out of ww2 so fast? Well Germany took on the entire world by itself and nearly won, the blitzkrieg was so good that even the German Commanders who used it were shocked at its success. So tell me again the French are weak, the Germans were a millitary titan." At which point they shut up.

Americans generally hate the French I feel, and NOT because they have been given any reason to, but because the Government and media, and ignorant citizens tell them they should, and like sheep they follow. Stereotypes DO have roots in truth, however to over simplfy things and generalize an entire country of people is stupidity in the highest degree.

No offense to Germans but I never hear Germans referred to as "Nazis" on a broad scale, and Germany has done a hell of alot more to make people in this country not like them. Same with Japan, I find that people in this country (especially younger ones, because of video games and Anime) LOVE Japan, I never hear "Damn dirty Japs, screw them for Pearl harbor". But I always hear "wussy French we have had to save their ass so many times"

*shrug* What can I say? This is earth, and I think its been proven that humans are stupid, worthless trash (this IS a stereotype I will stand by =p).

Here is one last funny as hell, but sad observation.

Americans HATE Osama Bin Laden, they HATE Saddamn Hussein....

But....Whats with these assholes with Confederate flags? Jefferson Davis was directly responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any of the above people, and yet we have Americans wearing the Confederate flag! Lol ahh what a joke some of these people are. I guess its ok to kill for a despotic reason in the eyes of Americans as long as the Despot is American. Everyone who has a Confederate flag in their house, on a shirt , or as a bandana should be shot in the face. Hipocritical morons.

and you broke the myth of another stereotype...the French didn't surrender. :P

Hello, I'm a french dude and I live in France of course ^_^, and maybe I could give you some arguments on the many things I've read in this thread from the start.

About the language thing, Yes we may be proud about our language and we translate a lot of words into our own language, but we all do, in order to incorporate things to our culture. Someone gave an exemple about Scotia Nova, but I think everyone translated the country names in their language, for example in french "Germany" is "Allemagne" while is Deutchland in its native language, same goes for Espana/Spain/Espagne and a lot of others.
Most people seen as they dont like to talk english are just people that suck at english, our foreign language teaching lvl is crap if you compare to countries like germany or sweden and nordic countries which have a way better level than we do.

Stereotyopes are fun, I'm still getting a good laugh when I see a french caricature walking with his "baguette" under his arm and his "beret" (french hat) on his head, like a 60 years old picture, old style.

I'm glad to see that this feeling "I hate frenchies" isn't shared by everyone, and that there are people defending us saying we are nice people who you can talk with and that we are not as bad as some people would like to make you believe.
Honestly it's been very frustrative since the beginning of the "tension", we kinda feel like being the black duck rejected by everybody and sorta being in the middle of an promotional campaign against us sometimes, I recently saw a "french" wrestler (he's almost as french as W. himself) wearing our colours and of course using french stereotypes, being here just to have an entire stadium shouting at him and gathering all the "hatred" on him to make the public hot (like the russian icons in the 60's). From outside it's weird since you see that it's not at the man that people are shouting at, but at the "symbol", to what he represents, and I must admit it kinda freaked me out, cause there was a very massive crowd in the stadium...

But we also know that it's not a feeling shared by all the population, that many people have their own opinions and beliefs and don't let themselves being influenced by the media.
Like some said before, there are good and bad people in every country, just wishing that the majority are good, and that, oh jeez i'm so tired of writing such a massive english text, so lazy, so low, so stoned...

Ok guys I love you and I wish you love me too, and that we will all love each other, and share. Orgy !

PS : Forgive my english.

PS#2 : I'm looking for cool and skilled people to play with, I kinda feel alone in my own 1 man guild, i'd like to do FoW/UW with cool guys and do some pvp too, if you're interested tell me

Very nice summary !
I hope you're right : there are bad an good people in each country, the only hope is that good people are the majority !

Or that the bad are not running the country.

There is a difference between the french and the english!

the english are right! everything everyone else says is bollocks. our language is the right one and everyone should speak it!

(don't take me seriously, its a joke.)

lol, you know how to calm down a debate, Charcoal !

Exactly... There's three broad groups -

Germanic - that'd be German, Dutch, Danish... and English, though English is a pretty wonky language 'cause half our vocabulary is actually from latin and norman french...

Romance - Latin, and its bastard children Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian

Slavic - Eastern European stuff... Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian

There's quite a lot of words that are similar (try looking up translations for "mother", you'll see what I mean). But not quite similar enough to be remotely mutually intelligible.