It also takes more than a few hundred years for people to forget that your country was into taking over countries permently to expand your territory.
I’ve only been to Paris once, and found the people there absolutely delightful.
People on the street, the hotel manager, store workers, waiters, (with me prouncing “et” with a hard t)…all smiled and were pleasant.
I did follow a few pieces of advice before going. One, I dressed nicely. No shorts, no sneakers, no t-shirts. And I was never arrogant or snotty. The other thing I did a lot was smile. 99% of the time French people came up to me speaking French…assuming I was French (I favor Grandmama, who is French). Once they found out I was American, they all smiled and apologized (I don’t speak a word of French).
BTW, I have met a LOT of really snotty French people…and every single one of them was an immigrant to the U.S.
OK, here my take on it and I’m fairly well travelled. I’ve been to Canada many time and I have travelled to many areas of France, not just Paris.
Language - The French speak French, we know that. They also learn other languages and want to use that fact to communicate as best they can. The French/Canadians insist that the entire country of Canada be bilingual except they don’t want to enforce that principle in Quebec. F/C’s, in general are more bilingual than the French yet they sometimes will pretend that they don’t know any English apparantly just to be an annoyance. While all of Canada goes to great effort and expense to be bilingual, the Quebecers seem to make an effort to not be bilingual.
Rude Service - In all of my travels (other than Quebec) I have rarely, if ever been, intentionally ignored by service employees. It has happened several times in hotels, bars and restaurants in Quebec. Then when you finally get some service, even if you don’t express annoyance it doesn’t seem to crack the surliness. French waiters can be a bit off-putting at first but they can be won over.
Yes, these are my own impressions. Call it a flawed survey. I love travelling in Canada and I love travelling in France. I’ll go back. However, one of the joys of travelling is the interaction with the locals. I guess what I am trying to explain is an attitude that I have observed among the F/C’s that they don’t seem to want to interact with you.
Fact? No. Opinion. Yours.
For the sake of completeness. Search Google for “French Military Victories” and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Still, after all these years, you get a page asking if you meant, “French Military Defeats”.
Although jokes about French rudeness, and their disdain for Americans and American “culture” have been around for as long as I can recall, I don’t recall any jokes about willingness to surrender (and that whole “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”) until after the first Gulf War. Now I see it everywhere. I don’t think I’m misremembering – there might have been the odd reference to Vichy France before that, but there was none of the French = surrender feeling that’s there now.
By the way, I had to get some pictures to illustrate an article, and the Louvre was a heckuva lot more cooperative than the German museums I dealt with, or even the British Museum. I ain’t badmouthin’ the French.
Among older Americans (yeah, I guess that includes me), the de Gaulle period, when France quit NATO and ordered all NATO personnel out of France, caused quite a bit of animosity. There’s a possibly apocryphal story about a meeting between de Gaulle and Dean Rusk, Kennedy’s Secretary of State. de Gaulle told Rusk he wanted all US troops out of France immediately. Rusk is said to have replied “Does that include the ones in the cemetaries?”
From a perspective from Mexico, there is a hate-love relationship. The balance since the 1800’s being who was in power (Conservatives, Liberals, Nationalists, etc.). The Hate perception: They were an imperialist country that invaded Mexico and we kicked their butts! The Love perception: Oooooh…they have a cool culture. They are very refined, good food, and beautiful women. Generally speaking, most mexicans don’t think much about France or what it does inside or outside country as it seems in the US.
I don’t know, but I saw the words “Why does everyone hate the” and I knew the last word would be “French”.
The real mystery is why do the French love Jerry Lewis?
Touche’
Ooops, that should have been “cemeteries”. I’ve read about this quote several times, but I can’t find any authoritative evidence that it actually happened. I do know that is reflects a fairly widespread feeling during my childhood that France was remarkably ungrateful for the US role in its continued existence. My father was a D-day veteran who was very upset by de Gaulle’s NATO withdrawal.
I think in the case of Quebec, it’s a combination of the language issue and seperatism, mostly.
What was it, seven alliances to stop Napoleon? Do other Europeans look on the French for Napoleon’s wars as some British look on the Germans for WWII? Some feuds seem to last a while in France.
BTW, their small hatchbacks aren’t too bad actually, that’s my disclaimer to show I’m not a Franco-phobe 
I’m from the north of Spain, born about 60 miles from the border by road and less than 40 as the crow flies.
We don’t hate the French so much as practice the universal sport of “picking on the neighbors”. People from the western part of Spain don’t make jokes about “an Englishman, a Frenchman and a Spaniard”: it’s “an Englishman, a Portuguese and a Spaniard.”
And there’s the little detail that “the french are ok so long as you run into them in neutral territory”. A Spaniard who’s perfectly happy to inform you that all Italians are thieves and all Frenchmen wash their butts with eau de toilette will also see them as cousins if encountering them in, say, the UK. Those English speak even weirder than the French!
Actually, Canada isn’t really a bilingual country. Generally, English Canada will be English-only while Quebec will be French-only, with a few exceptions, such as Montreal, which is without a doubt a bilingual city, and Ottawa, which is also partly bilingual. (Although in both cities you will find anglophones who don’t speak French, and maybe a small number of francophones who don’t speak English.) So if you go to smaller cities in Quebec, or even to Quebec City, it’s quite possible that you will find a lot of people who simply do not speak English, or not enough to sustain a conversation. (Or people who do speak it, but are too shy to do it with you; I’ve also seen this attitude with English Canadians.)
Don’t believe that English Canada goes to great expense and effort to be bilingual. There is a policy that the federal government must offer services in both languages, but as I said, when you are in English Canada (some parts of Ontario and New Brunswick are exceptions), you speak English. Even when I’m here, in Ottawa (my location says Gatineau, Quebec, which is a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario, and I work in Ottawa), I speak English most of the time.
This said, you may have conflated two different opinions. Some French-Canadians believe all of Canada should be bilingual (which, I think, is impossible and would probably not even be a good idea if it was possible), while others realise that English Canada is mostly unilingual, but think that Quebec should also be mostly a French-language society. Of course, they might learn English, since it’s quite useful in today’s world, and indeed, there might be tourists who only speak it, but they shouldn’t be surprised to see that some people will only speak French. So you may have merged those two opinions to get the idea that francophone Quebecers want all of Canada except Quebec to be bilingual, which is an opinion that I’ve never seen anyone holding.
This said, apparently the people living in Quebec City tend to be more conservative and parochial; maybe they’re the ones you’ve had bad experiences with.
I don’t remember being served rudely anywhere in Quebec. Maybe it’s just a cultural difference and what I’m used to and consider right would be seen as rude by an American, but then again I don’t think so since I would consider being “intentionally ignored” (if that’s indeed what they did) as rude. I can’t tell you, I wasn’t there.
But to conclude (and I’m not saying it applies to you), what I do know is that many Americans and English Canadians who come here have already hold negative opinions of Quebec, opinions that come from people they know, the media, etc. I remember Hamish saying that when he came to Montreal from British Columbia, he expected to be eaten alive by the locals before he realised that people are all right, they’re just like anyone else. So (and again I’m not saying it applies to you) this undercurrent of dislike for Quebec by people who otherwise know nothing else about the province might be the reason why Americans and English Canadians notice it more when they are mistreated here, and then decide that it must be one of our fundamental characteristics. I know that on this board I’ve jumped in many discussions where people were expressing negative opinions of Quebec, and I don’t want to bore people with this, but I want them to at least have the opinion of someone who is part of the people in question.
I see your point, but these issues are notoriously misunderstood outside Quebec (and even inside of it).
As to the French, re: the USA, it is a second amendment issue. To wit
France being the oldest modern democracy, both secure and free does thereby rather tend to interrogate that amendment in a hostile manner. The USAns, bless’em, are rather defensive about their constitution and the continued and ongoing failure of La France to descend into tyranny and chaos, notwithstanding the paucity of firearms, is a frank slap in the face. This insult is not to be tolerated and must be met in kind.
Exactly. All the references to World War II are rationalization; the wave of anti-French sentiment that started sweeping the U.S. a couple years ago was because they opposed the invasion of Iraq. I don’t deny that there was some underlying dislike of the French, but that feeling was amplified a hundredfold by the French refusal to join the “Coalition of the Willing”.
It was frankly about the same sentiment that got directed as those of us who opposed the war. The French and I are still waiting for our apology.
Which explains the American loathing for England, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Especially Portugal! OH GOD HOW I HATE THE PORTUGUESE!
Every large nation in Western Europe was a colonial power. If you’re holding that against the French, I’m smelling more rationalization.
In the US, I think the fundamental cause is classism, just another manifestation of the rural vs. urban mindset. France is used as an effigy of European erudition, progressivism, socialism, etc. It’s just the overseas version of “The liberal elites” or “The academic elites”. When you mix in the French arrogance with their unfortunate showing in recent military engagements, it becomes a convenient way for anybody with a high-school education to dismiss notions that they don’t understand.
If I might add my deux centimes:
There is nothing inherently wrong with French engineering or the French military. Once the Wright brothers figured things out for them, the French were the outstanding aviation leaders right up to WWI, and if I remember correctly, built far more airplanes during the Great War than anyone else. Eddie Rickenbacker and his fellow American pilots flew SPADs and Nieuports, but I don’t think a single American made aircraft saw service. The Renault tanks of WWI were the direct ancestor of virtually all tanks today. In WWII, the Maginot line actually worked - there were no dramatic breakthroughs. The problem was were the line stopped, that was not a military decision, but a political one made be a government in the midst of the great depression. The French failure in WWII was a civilian goverment loss of nerve - the Germans actually suffered more casualties after Paris fell, and the French military was deprived of the benefits of their civilian leadership. Besides, one might want to give some credit to the German Army, who were not exactly the target market for the book “Blitzkreig fur Dumpkopfen.” After the carnage of WWI and WWII, it is no wonder the French don’t want to get involved in a war that is not for the direct, immediate benefit of the French. WWI started because of a third party incident (Archduke Ferdinand’s assisnation), WWII becase of the invasion of Poland. Not that Hitler didn’t have plans, but who knows how they would have worked out if France were not commited to defending Poland.
I think that there are a couple reasons for the instinctive disliking the French. The first is that like most cultures, there is a physical expression aspect to speaking. The first time I was in Paris, I met fabulous looking French babe. While trying not to stare at her boobs or legs, I noticed that when she held her cigarette in a particulary goofy (to me) way - very elaborate smoking gestures, and it waved around so much when she was speaking that an Italian would be proud. But basically, I got the impression from her expressions, gestures, and tone of voice that I should already understand whatever the hell she was rambling on about. I think that kind of expression is simply part of the French language as expressed physically. It is a cultural “look.” I have seen other “looks” in other places. Most eastern Europeans I have might have a totally neutral facial expression that to me, looks like they are ready to kill someone - soon. In reality, they are simply daydreaming about what’s for lunch or reliving last night’s football game. The German look gave me the impression that we should all be doing something together, why aren’t you holding up your share? None of this makes French or German or whatever culture better - just different, and coming from a different culture we look at these expressions during our conversations and can form the wrong opinion.
The second is a real cultural difference. The author of “The Victory of Reason” postulates that one great, unifying them of all French people for hundreds of years, was to be some sort of government official - any kind of govenment official, even if it meant losing money on the deal. You had two kinds of people in France, the government and those damn peasants, and being any kind of official put you on the same side as the Sun King. When you think of it, I always felt that the French (in general) were, well, officious. Well, they really are because that is what their culure wanted them to be.