(Tongue-in-cheek, I hope) From the UK: Luckily, it's still all right to mock the French

[pampango]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/nigelfarndale/8499447/Luckily-its-still-all-right-to-mock-the-French.html

This, I submit, is because we feel the French are big enough and culturally confident enough to take it. Racism is only racism if bullying is involved – in other words, when a stronger group picks on one it perceives to be weaker. As the French do, all the time.

It is also because if any people deserve to be mocked, it is the French. I have checked this with Jeremy Clarkson, and he assures me that they are ridiculous, rude, pompous, annoying, arrogant, chippy, humourless and in many ways insufferable. Also, they banned our beef. And they have no word for entrepreneur.

Although I have listed several of their faults above, it is their chippiness I would like to concentrate on, especially their chippiness about the French language. It has emerged that French radio stations are unable to fulfil their government-imposed quota of French pop songs and are having to play more English music instead, which must be galling (or should that be gauling?) for them.

Since 1994, the law has required that 40 per cent of all songs on national radio must be sung in French, but they have now realised, along with the rest of the world, that French pop songs are rubbish, apart from Joe Le Taxi, and there are only so many times you can play that before the people rise up and storm the Bastille. Even French performers have realised that songs sung in French inspire nothing but ennui, and most of them are now recording in English, the international language of pop.

This U-turn follows a decision a few years ago by the French government finally to allow its air traffic controllers at Charles de Gaulle airport to speak in English, the Mandated International Language of Aviation, as decreed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. It took a big pile-up on the runway to change their chippy French minds.

Even funnier is the way French is being steadily usurped as the language of diplomacy by… yep, English, the new lingua franca. How cruel is that? After all those Norman invaders trying to force everyone to speak French. Their ultimate humiliation came when, having brokered the UN resolution on the Libyan no-fly zone, appalled French diplomats saw that it was drafted in English. Apparently, the document the world was waiting for had to be delayed while they scurried off to have it translated into French.

[southernyankeebelle]

1. I was in France once. Never again will I waste my time and money. I found them to be rude. I

don't like their food. The language is pretty to hear but I don't know why they seem so against english speaking people. They are no worse or better then english speaking countries.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Attacking national origin is not racist, neither is attacking members of a religion.

French was once the international language and the language for diplomacy. Not any more, and that frosts some people. Oh well. Not racist either.