I will try to provide an educated answer, because there’s a lot to say about “rosbeefs”, our gentle nickname for them, and some of it will surprise a lot of foreign readers .
I’ve spent what stacks in months of extended stay in the uk, living among brits families (London, Durham, some llani-ish place in wales…). My sister is married to an english teacher and lives in Somerset.
So I will try to provide experienced insights, mixed with prejudice, and the conclusion will surprise you.
We’ve spend centuries claiming on each other and on what’s surrounding
Our rivalry is at least a thousand years old, we were at war over Europe dominancy for a cumulated time of centuries and we’ve never had, until EU treaties, a decent and formalized peace treaty so we’ve started the 20th century on a mere “gentleman agreement”.
Even if we are pretty clear about the fact that Jeanne d’Arc was burnt by the french, we would not forgive brits for it (we’re very good at living up to our paradoxes, please don’t mind)
You will expect us to still actively loathe each other when, in fact :
Brit bashing is not really longer a mainstream thing
We’ve quite frankly moved on from that, even if some was popular in the eighties/nineties. We have to work on Europe mostly with the germans, our new best friends (*sigh*), because of how entangled our economy has become with theirs, with EU’s stability directly depending on our joint actions.
Uk has been seen as a pain in the bottom regarding European affairs, the general ressentment being them feeling in the Union only when convenient for them. We naturally have a better coverage of German politics and culture right now, especially with Brexit going on.
We, put simply, lost interest in UK and thus losing interest in being mean/prejudiced to them, whereas there seems to be no end to France’s bashing on the other side of the Channel. Blokes, seriously, we don’t really take interest in uk’s views on us, it has more and more became a kind of white noise that don’t get to be reported around here anymore. And we don’t use references to england in our communications, it’s old fashioned, and fashion matters
But there still can’t be any friendly football or rugby competition with England…
Tests matches and friendly gathering is part of any national team training and you expect those competitions to be free of foul play or nasty moves. That doesn’t apply, by any mean, to any France - England especially in football or even more in Rugby.
Every play transforms itself into a search&destroy warfare, they tend to be the last battlefield with our dear neighbours. They’re likely to be covered extensively in english press, less in french one.
But we have an history of french players becoming major players in uk football clubs (with a strong support of football fans like Thierry Henry, Cantona…) and to host english players in our rugby clubs. This has diminished over time the overall nastiness, but not lessen the particular mood of those competitions.
… and we tend to support our real best friends in the United Kingdom : the Scotts
“the auld alliance” is still there and we’re likely to team with people that messed so much with England. Hail whisky aged in brandy casks, hail Irn Bru (for selling better than coke), hail scones, hail hagg… wait not that one.
You got my point, we’re far more interested in Scotland next move regarding EU than by the fate of England.
We’re also really don’t have a clear understanding on why Ireland isn’t already reunified (and it’s in fact a complicate matter worsen by terrorism that none of us here would tolerate on any level), we kind of feel that no matter what, England is totally unable of letting go (and that it applies to so many fields).
So long and thanks for all the fish & chips
The sequence of brexit can be summarized from a french point of view by the following :
- Oh Cameron promise an opt-out referendum, Tories must be in real trouble to give that much away to their right wing, but hey, that’s politics
- English people are mostly decent blokes with common sense, they know right inside that they benefit from Europe, it’s a unique opportunity for the EU to grow stronger with a UK supportive of it. We may even end not having to hang that much with Germany, that sounds cool
- Come on surveys,no one can’t be that stupid, childish and illiterate (with USA screaming “hold my beer” in far distance). Please take masks off and comes clean about Ukip’s campaign being the finest display of british humor. Guys, come on… hey guys seriously
- What the ducking duck have you fools just done?
- Ahahahaha quitters don’t even have a plan? Cameron resigning over his own mess? People having vote for no because they never fought it could win? Plz stahp, we need to breathahahahahahahahahaha
- Oh, we still have a problem with all our french people working in London, that could be a problem but then the whole City has to move elsewhere, we’ll see to that later.
- Wait you have what? Terms and conditions about your departure, access to the free market, liberty of work inside EU for your peeps?. Seriously? ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
- No really, pack your stuff and leave, you’re embarrassing yourself.
- Knock on USA’s door, I’m sure they have improved their recipe for sweet tea since your last encounter
To be less humorous about it, contrary to the sayings of our politicians, we don’t think it’s a global tragedy for EU. Most of us will tell you we feel sorry for the people who voted for “remain” and how difficult it’s gonna be for their country. But then, there’s also a feeling that whithout UK, EU will speed by tremendous amounts its decision making process and could potentially overcome a lot of situations related to UK obstructions.
We’re on the whole ready to go through the small storm of uk departure and ready to surf the calmer sea that is waiting for us afterwards.
Drop the pan now, I repeat, drop the pan now
Without any surprise, we still think they’re the worst cooks on earth, or more likely, that they’re best cooks Hell can afford. There’s still a rough competition with the Dutchs on that specific title, but uk is definitely better at being worse
Every canon meal, except the ones coming from their former colonies, is widely seen by us as an insult to the very basic concept of food. And we’re treating Marmite and Vegemite as terrorists threats with a open-fire-on-sight policy.
For everyone alien to our food war, I’ll try to highlight the most important points :
- English food is expensive, especially in restaurant or pub. The more expensive, the trashier.
- Subtile shades of cooking, like totally under or over cooked, are yet to be discovered by uk scientists. It seems like everything is overcooked and the result is hidden under tons of gravy. Because there’s no way that piece of beef could have taste good on its own, amarite?
- The more inappropriate use of mint as a cooking ingredient in almost every way where it isn’t an appropriate cooking ingredient
- Chocolate so milky you can age it into cheese, which could surprisingly be a better use of it
- Pies are your most convenient way to hide a crime. And taste like one.
- Butter stored in closets
- A serious problem with garlic butter (seriously guys, it’s fine with snails, but for everything else it’s plainly gross)
- Christmas Pudding should be filed for crime against humanity
- Stop lying to yoursleves, you can’t have dinner at 6pm. It’s not dinner. But as long as we’re concerned, it’s not food either anyway.
- Lambs, veals, piglets are perfectly edible, you wussies
- Oh my god the price of alcohol and cigarettes /o\
To be completely honest, I praise some of your products (because even England can’t screw everything) : malt vinegar, liquorice, blue cheese and aged cheddar, fudge, salt&vinegar crisps, even baked beans can come handy when desperate
You use that word fashion and I don’t think it means what you think it means
Casual excentricity is what comes first in a french mind when talking about England’s fashion, or more appropriately, the absence of it. It seems to us that they got creativity wrong by merging it with excentricity.
We all have in mind that you have a strong, distinctive style for tailoring, umbrellas and leather shoes.
For everything else, the extensive use of cheap, unajusted, trashy pieces of clothing, thrown together like they were really drawn randomly from your drawers, makes you spotted as english lad/gal several kilometers around. Top it with a fake burberry cap and you’re winning the vulgar lottery, except there’s no prize since you’re so many to have win.
We will also never understand your fond love of greetings cards, xmas cheap gifts of even cheaper conception.
And eventually, Perpendicular Gothic is exactly what you came up with when trying to grasp the concept of good taste. Unsurprisingly, you failed largely and basically achieved to even get your churches wrong. To the point it became an inspiration for a sorcerer school, that kind of failure
The only benefit from your country seems to be cheaper sporting clothing, be it professional or lifestyle products
Sports, you got it right…
Unless the ones only you and your former colonies are playing at (cricket, snooker, lawn bowls…)
I was baffled by how affordable and available sports facilities are all through the country and this was always a motivitation to come visit and spending some times in your country, knowing that I will not have to sell a limb or two to afford 15min of squash.
I aslo have the upmost respect regarding soccer clubs fandom, hooliganism aside, and the respect shown by english stadiums to their players.
I can be a very decent opponent in darts or even in snooker, but my encounters with you fellows are leading to my next point
… but my gosh, do you really have to bet about almost anything?
it seems that Ladbrokes offices are some kind of critical facilities that are more relevant to your life, than a townhouse or even more than pubs
Terry Pratchett coined that the smallest amount of time is defined by the time it takes to hear the first honk after a traffic light goes green in Paris. I beg to differ (some king of english idiom meaning “I will unleash the forces of the seven hells against you”), there’s a whole quantic field within that time frame only built of english blokes saying “I’ll bet ya a tenner…”
Example :
- “ - the weather seems quite clear, I hope it stays that wa…
- … I’ll bet ya a tenner it doesn’t”
WITH ALMOST EVERYTHING! WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU? APPART FROM EVERYTHING ELSE?
Music and humour, ok, you have a second point
self explanatory, uk’ve provided a lot of great music to the world and got most of it right.
I won’t cover rock, but I’m an active dj and I treasure my Uk garage / speed garage / bassline / grime / dubstep / D&D vinyls collection. Seriously, even with endemic styles that most of the world never heard of, you still nailed it
Most of my most cherished comedies comes from you, from Monty Pythons to The League of Gentlemen, Adams and Pratchett, Black Adder to Smack the Pony, Spaced to Hot Fuzz. And overly attachment to your royal family, that one is bloody hilarious
UK politics, your way to remind us constantly of what we don’t want to become
Germany and France based their respective welfare model (unemployement, retirement, helathcare) on Otto von Bismarck’s ideas : a compulsory but mutualized system where people pay fees according to their revenues but get benefits also based on revenues (retirement, unemployement ; for healthcare everyone get the same benefits, a pretty much costless health system, but you can’t opt out of it). You never pay for yourself, you pay for those needing it knowing that if something happens to you or when you’ve finally worked enough to retire, you will get the same perks
England has a pretty different take on it, with a system based on Beveridge work : everyone pays roughly the same but everyone gets the same benefits, no matter his former revenues. You have in this system to take extra insurance and retirement plans to keep your revenues.
To us it is seen as having to rely on banks / financial companies for something that important and also it tends to favour the richest who can spare a bigger share of their revenues (egalitarian France will see this as an unforgettable sin).
With the noticeable impulse of Tatcherian economics, England has open several strategic market to competition, far earlier than France.
Since then, UK has been our better scarecrow regarding extended capitalism and its consequences, wrongly or thruthfully regarding our own agenda. We litteraly hold modern UK as the best exemple of what France shouldn’t be. From mad cow pandemics to the tragic fire that took so many lives recently in London, we will always point it to people too eager for us to follow uk’s lead as tragic failures that we don’t want to see happen.
We know we are mocked, especially by english people, as prone to go on strike for the slightest inconvenience. Well, most of the protests that took place during the last thirty years were aimed at politicians forcing us down that path, be it on trying to change rules of our social system or giving too much power to private companies.
We are proud of this cliché, to us it means :
- that we care about politics and what France is doing and becoming
- powerful enough in the street to have a lot of bs backed down (we’re at it since 1789, we have 2 centuries of training)
- that our leaders are our employees, not some kind of sheperds leading us to greener fields (not the most suitable to grow grapes anyway)
Even if there are some obvious excessive use of our protesting habits (we know right, we’re the first in line when public transportation comes to a full stop), we have this image of brittons never complaining about anything and getting shoved a whole lot of BS (certainly a very wrong image, but we are talking about perception here).
Oh and blaming almost everything on the EU is the most stupid, short viewed, self inflicted habit in the civilized world. But then again, you just can’t let it go.
If you want to see a French and English people tag alone at the speed of light, all you need is…
…any German peeps entering the room. That is still pretty, pretty solid, even if we tend to tag alone very well with germans these days. Two world wars have tied France, UK (and America, of course) towards a single enemy and force peace between our countries. Having us to agree on anything seems to be the sole achievement of Germany during the first half of the 20th century.
UK resilience towards German aggression, the all in of French army during Dunkerque siege (the real one, not the crooked movie one), the support given to french resistance in London and the real long term vision of Churchill leading to how France was to be treated after war (against america’s will) have created a special bond, the kind we don’t really share with USA anymore
Plus, we have been fighting during all our known history, succeeding at containing each other bloodthrist across continental europe, building a certain kind of respect only applying to us
To end on a more lighter side, we have mixed feelings that goes beyond love or hate.
In the end, you will find a french and an english sitting on a bench, watching the whole world burn to its end. Because they are the only worthy opponent we’ve encountered overall, with manners and etiquette, even if we represent two separate ways of achieving gentlemanhood.
And the French will say : “- c’est la vie, j’éspère seulement qu’il fera beau aujourd’hui (shit happens, because “c’est la vie” is “shit happens” dripped in profund existentialism, at least I hope we’ll get nice weather)
The english will respond : “I bet ya a tenner it doesn’t”
And we will end the world by the most magnificent brawl there’ll ever be
[edit] : in spite of the great efforts our public education system put into teaching foreign language while having students actually not learning any of it, it appears I can write something close to proper English. But I can’t claim full victory over it, and I will try periodically to enhance grammar and spelling on this answer. Thanks for bearing with me and my perfectible english.
