Vive La France!

22 thoughts on “Vive La France!”

1. I believe that brings the total to 15 countries now.Report

2. 1) I love that you’ve tagged this with “Burt Likko’s awkward French.” I cherish the thought that someone out there might find our community by searching for that.

   2) This is just the international development to turn same-sex marriage opposition around in this country. If there’s one country social conservatives look to for guidance in such matters, it’s France.

   3) That said, YAY! FRANCE! One more reason to visit. (I never have, and frankly fear doing so because I speak not a lick of French, and have heard maybe they’re not so nice to non-speakers? One of these days we’ll arrange to travel with a francophone friend to allay my anxiety.)Report

   1. Re the parenthetical in #3: from (a little) experience and (more) hearsay, they’re not so bad, as long as you don’t just assume that they speak English (which, sadly, I witnessed Americans doing on more than one occasion).Report

      1. This has been my experience during my all-too-brief visits to La France as well. Even if your French is bad, the locals just get a little bit impatient but generally bear with you because they realize it’s not your mother tongue. A cab driver very patiently and with the most genial of attitudes tried to teach me the correct accent on the word “Lyon” for ten minutes on the ride from the airport into the city — I said “Lee-yuh” and he said what sounded all the world to me like “Lee-yuh” also but apparently his “Lee-yuh” was better than mine. But as long as I kept trying, he was quite happy with his new American friend.Report

         1. My experience is slightly different. I found that in the more touristy joints in Paris (and Reims, for that matter), the waiters got annoyed with you pretty much no matter what you tried to do short of speaking perfect French. In the less touristy joints in Paris, the waiters just appreciated when I or someone in my party just made an effort. The harder one tried – no matter how successfully – the more the effort was appreciated.

            In the countryside, where relatively few people spoke more than a few words of English but tourists were less common, just about everyone we came across was exceedingly nice as long as you figured out any way of communicating with them. Interestingly, these were also the areas of France where support for Marine Le Pen is traditionally the strongest.Report

3. Bien joué!Report

4. Ugh… as if the French weren’t gay enough…Report

5. Hooray for… France… Good on the… French… uegh.. my anglophile side can’t find any way around it. The French did us a solid. It still doesn’t excuse them for poutine though.Report

   1. As a fellow gay anglophile, I feel your pain.

      The UK will still beat the US, though.Report

      1. Heh…despite being as straight as a mighty redwood full of majestic bald eagles with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, I am also an anglophile.

         I blame the Pythons…I always feel like the French are looking for a chance to taunt me a second time…Report

         1. Why was your mother a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries?Report

            1. I think I smell something wafting in my general direction, but it’s not elderberries…Report

   2. Poutine belongs to Quebec, not to France. Unless we’re blaming them for not trading Guadaloupe to the English and taking Quebec back when they had the chance…Report

      1. Mmm… poutine.Report

      2. I do actually. It inevitably would have descended into another war and the English would have taken Quebec back again. Maybe being beaten and conquered by the reviled anglais twice would make the Quebecois less snooty*.

         *Full disclosure, my sister lives in Quebec and some of her friends are the most wonderful kind generous people I have ever met. I will never forgive those wonderful people for that.Report

      3. Trivioid: c’est une poutine in the rest of the French-speaking world means “it’s a damned old dog’s dinner.” A mess of a very specific sort, one where all sorts of things are jumbled together.Report

6. Of course the fast that the French did this will only harden opposition among a certain crowd. If the french like it, it must be wrong.Report

7. Je suis un peu….francophobe. Cependant, je voudrais aussi feliciter les Francais d’avoir realise cet avancement.Report

8. (“Célébrez, et soyez joyeux!,” she muttered sotto voce despite the endearing tag which ought to have kept her from such nitpicking.)Report

9. Hooray!Report

10. C’est riots.Report

    1. Il y a les émeutes.Report

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