I'm french, ask me anything

Is Jerry Lewis really GOD to you?

 

In fact, I'm not talking about 1789. The republic took time to come in France, for short :
1729 : A priest named Jean Meslier die in a small village. He will let a "testimony". It's a book criticizing the christian faith and claiming atheism, the book will hardly escape the censure, but it will 1789 : Revolution, the regime change but is still a monarchy 1792 : revolution in the revolution, monarchy is down 1793 : Execution of Louis XVI, the terror will start, Robespierre proclame the cult of "the supreme being" and say "atheism is artistocratic 1804 : Napoleon become emperor and put back the catholic faith as official faith 1815 : Napoleon is defeated, Louis XVIII become king (younger brother of Louis XVI) (Louis XVII was theorically king between the death of his father Louis XVI and his death in 1795), we use back the white royal flag who provoked jokes nowodays 1828 : Charles X (another younger brother of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII died without children) face a revolution, he decide to abdicate and force his son Louis XIX to abdicate for the his nephew, the grand son of Charles X, a cousin of them use that opportunity to be recognized king by the assembly he will become king as Louis Phillipe and will bring back the blue white red flag 1848 : Louis Phillipe must flee France because of another revolution, he became to authoritarian, the second republic is proclamed, they elect a president Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon 1852 : He do a referendum to be claimed emperor, he become Napoleon III (Napoleon II theorically became emperor for few days, he would be send in the austrian royal family, his mother was austrian, he will die at 21 YO) 1870 : horrific defeat of Sedan, the emperor surrender, french revolt claim the republic and continue the fight, however the republic can't make up for the defeat of Sedan and are defeated too, Wilhem the first is claimed kaiser in Versailles, the deep hatred of french for german will start and will lead to WW1, the treaty of Versaille who will greatly lead to WW2. 1906 : State and church are declared independant, priest are no longer paid by the state.

That's the third republic who will divorce with the religion. The popes weren't really friendly with the republic, as far as I know, one even excommuniate republicans.

Catholic priests were promissing only pain and most of them discourage any revolt. However in the late 19th century France, revolt would improve the quality of life of workers.

I'm not really religious myself.
Jeanne d'Arc heard the voice of god.
Catherine de Labour and Bernadette Soubirou both saw the virgin Mary.

In all cases, those women were alone during the apparition.

As an athee who don't believe in god, I would think to hallucinations, probably schizophrenia. No offence intended to your faith however.

I don't think that atheist or non religious are for most of them less or more deep thinkers that religious people.
I think too you're wrong about what motivate athees or non religious people. I don't think they seek for doing as they please, I just think they don't believe in it. Furthermore, at a moment, more and more their unreligious people, the more people tend to get unreligious.

 

How can someone learning your language from scratch ever make sense of it? I find especially spoken French really difficult to understand.

 

Are 'French Toast' or 'French Fries' really French? If not, do you know what they are?

 

French fries are more likely belgian. That's pretty surprizing when we start to learn english to know they are called "french fries" because they aren't considered as part of french food.

I ate a lot of french toast when I was a child, however it seems that french toast recipe existed even during the late roman empire.

 

Thread still active

 

I kind of like Macron. The Trump handshake, and that vid where he's walking towards the leaders and it looks like he's heading for Trump and then veers off and embraces the others, leaving Trump looking like an idiot (not difficult). Can he get a majority and be able to govern, though?

 

I don't like Trump, but trying to humiliate Trump is not a good solution, even more when we consider that Trump seems to be deeply impulsive.
He will very likely get a majority. What we still don't know is if he will have to ally with another parti.

But personnaly, I deeply dislike Macron. If you listen Macron, he can talk for ten minutes, and in ten minutes, he would be able to say nothing. He is really the kind of man who speak in a hollow way.

French elections will definitively end the next week at evening when we will know the definitive composition of the national assembly (the title of the main assembly of the two french assemblies of France).

The good news is that we will know the real face of Mr Macron really soon too.

 

Why is the French suicide rate so high?

 

We're pessimistic people and a lot of us are unreligious. Religion is not what keep people of not killing/rapind but it may keep a lot of people not to suicide themselves. Furthermore, a lot of our psychotherapists are rather bad and prefer to keep old unadapted believes as freud said rather to adapt to the most adapted and modern one. I discovered the harsh way. A lot of people distrust medicaments too, but for me, it saved me.

A lot of farmer suicide themselves too, but they're more religious. The situation can be hard for a lot of them.

A lot of french people unfortunately prefer to focus on bad news and complaining. I don't like that, it's rather childish.

It's really a shame to consider that we have the double or even sometimes the triple of our neighbour. The only countries who beat us in Europe are nordic countries like finland, but they have a 6 month winter and lack of day lumonisity is shown as impacting depressive problem.

 

There are a couple of threads here talking about gun control in Britain. Do you think that the French people would welcome the loosening of the rather strict gan laws?

 

Sorry, but I somewhat disagree! I have several French friends who very much hesitated to vote for anyone but Fillon, because he is a Catholic, who does not believe in pro-choice and does not believe in gay marriage. In fact, most of those friends did, reluctantly, vote for Macron, but some actually preferred (as a protest vote) to vote for Le Pen. . .although they do not like her agenda!

The only reason religion is not a big deal in French politics is that most French people are either Catholics or . . .don't have a religion at all. Except, of course, for the Muslims!

 

I don't think so! Most of Europeans have no interest in guns. . .in fact, most Europeans have a difficult time understanding American's love story with those killing machines!

And. . .it is obvious that, even if France has many suicides, American's guns are more often used by their owners to commit suicide than to defend themselves from a real assault! And, America still has more suicide than France!

 

Yes. The french police is already regulary assaulted by some "diversity" with rocks or even sometime fridge from the roof of some building. They don't need to be shot. Furthermore, if you heard naturally a lot about Charlie Hebdo (guns), Paris (guns), Nice (truck), they were a lot of minor attacks too with knives or axe. Sometimes the consequences of those knives attacks were terrific (an off duty cop and his wife murdered in front of their 3 YO son), sometimes pathetic : a terrorist shot by our soldiers before being able to kill anybody.

Furthermore our police arrested/shot many terrorists because they were gathering guns. Buying guns illegaly while being is a good reason to be arrested.

But to be clear, many french own some hunting guns. That's far to be impossible to buy a gun in France, you just have to justify it.

Even with the terrific attacks of Paris and Nice, we will keep a murder rate much smaller than the american one. What's the point to change your model for a less working one. If american want guns, it's good for them.

You have to realize we have probably at least 10 000 wannabe terrorist. It's easy to have a gun in France if you know the right people, but a lot of people don't know the right people. It's mainly because of UE, when UE was extended to many former soviet countries, a lot of former guns of those soviet countries where smuggled into western european by drug dealers.

Furthermore, I would fear that some weakling like so called "antifas" would use gun to agress our police.



What they're able to do ! Maybe american police may be too violent, but their, our police was to pacifist !

Our police do a wonderfull job, and I doubt that allowing guns for everybody (so for a lot of wannabe terrorist) will make the task easier for them. By the way, when thousands of people are traitors who pledged allegiance to ISIS, they can't prevent everything.

It's not because he is a catholic fundamentalist, it's because he is one of the worst thief of this planet.

What he did :
=> He stole around 2 millions by creating false jobs for his wife and children.
=> Someone anonymous offered him suits.
=> He said that french should go to retirement later when he get his retirement at 57 YO when still getting political mandate.
=> He created an "advice" society where he was the only employee. A private society hired him WHILE HE WAS A REPRESENTANT OF THE PEOPLE and gave him 200 000 euros for "advices". French would like to know what kind of "advices" given by someone who is paid with OUR money to represent us could be worthy of 200 000 euros. The total of the benefit of the advices he got was around 1 million.

Fillon was one of the most crooked, corrupted politician we ever had.

Their is less and less catholic, but people wouldn't stop to vote for someone because he is catholic, we don't like thieve !

Nicolas Sarkozy is catholic, everybody disliked him too, but not because he was catholic. Most people, even non religious people, love the long dead General De Gaulle who was catholic, and we love him because he was deeply honnest, brave and willing to serve France, not his personnal interest.

 

Do you think that the French administration is too bureacratic? I know my tax return is different every year, like at least 10,000 people's main job is to change it.

 

Clearly yes. Probably one of the few thing most french would agree. By tradition, french love strong state and a strong state mean a lot of bureaucracy. It's not socialism, it's our political tradition and it began with Richelieu who was the craftsman of the centralized power and submissed nobility who were always fighting each other. It enabled peace and made France stronger, compared for instance to the italian or german cities which were deeply divized and fighting each other. Unfortunately, it led to poor choice. For instance Louis XIV forbid the freedom of religion enabled by his grandfather. Many protestants were deported. One of them was Denis Papin, and he was one of the inventor of the steam engine, many other flee to germany when they were a deep chance for the Berlin state.

It's probably one of the point were american and french couldn't understand each other. French love strong state, american "small" state.

However, I tend to think that both french and american are unassumed monarchist if we consider how we speak of our leaders.

 

The French constitution is a problem, with the President having too much power. That's what you refer to above. Should it be changed?

 

I consider that the nowodays constitution was good for the general de Gaulle because he was someone deeply honnest. He was the one who wrote it. Unfortunately, after him, they were mainly low level politician, smouth talker, liars and more obsessed by themselves.
Since I'm 18, I support a change of constitution but the problem is what kind of constituation to choose ?

But yes, I consider a part of the problems of France is because of a poor constitution who favour only two partis. When a system favour two partis, you're only one parti from the one parti system. That's why that even if I think that Georges Washington, Jefferson and Franklin were all brillant people, the political systeme of USA is terrible too !

They were a man during the french revolution, Condorcet, he was a mathematician who studied from a mathematician point of view the best systeme of votes. He predicted the flaws of most of them. He was unfairly rather forgotten and he was with Lavoisier one of those brillant scientist killed by a revolution who became mad.

Nowodays, the french systeme of vote is :
_ We vote a first round for as many candidates it's possible as long they have 500 signature of mayors or other kind of elected people. The two who get the most votes go to the second round.

The problem is that many people don't vote for the people they like, but for people they think they would go to the second round and are not too much terrible, but they don't choose people they think they would be the best for France.

For instance, in 2007, most people thought that François Bayrou would be a better president than Segolène Royal, and most people thought that François Bayrou would be a better president than Nicolas Sarkozy. A lot of people prefered to vote for Segolène Royal or Nicolas Sarkozy because the opinion polls said that François Bayrou would have only 8 % of the votes. Furthermore, for the right wing, they didn't want to have Segolene royal vs Jean marie Le Pen (father of Marine) or Nicolas Sarkozy vs Jean marie Le Pen for the left wing.

Living in society is based on the compromise, nobody do whatever they want, but they have to adapt to the rest of society. The nowodays system doesn't seek for a president that the vast majority would accept, but for a president that would represent a minority of extremist.

I'm not sure if it's very clear ?

 

I've always been fascinated by the Revolution and the Napoleonic Era, is there a consensus view of those events in the current French zeitgeist? If not, what are you thoughts?

Oh and, what's the best way to learn French short of living there for a long time?

 

How do you feel about Russia trying to control your election?

 

Why are you posting on this forum?

 

By the way, I don't appreciate it. I don't think we should seek fight with Russia but our indenpendance is the most important thing.

Because I wanted to talk with people from a different culture. Furthermore, I wished to improve a little bit my english even if the thing I should work the must now is pronunciation.

 

Do you surrender?

 

At the opposite of the nazis who is fast and dangerous, I totally know that you have just knock down the american. Then, he can't get up anymore.

 

I didn't know that. Link please?