Use of the phrase "The French'....! AP get into hot water

My apologies for the earworm, but the Bowie was doubly discriminatory - ‘young’ and ‘American’. Being neither I’m offended by being excluded, even though my mother was the latter and, presumably earlier on, was the former too,

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France appears to have taken all this in good humour, despite the odd company in which the AF post listed them

In a post on Twitter, the French Embassy in the U.S. suggested that it had renamed itself “the Embassy of Frenchness.”

One New York Times reader in Paris, in a comment on the article, had another suggestion: “Will somebody please interview “Emilie” (in Paris) and find out what she thinks. Then we’ll really know what to make of this.”

No problem, sorry for reminding you… Can I enquire did you want to have American citizenship? Don’t know the rules - is it if one is born there? Could one get it through one’s american mother if not?

I thought to see if AP also use the phrase ‘the americans’ - and they do, e.g. twitter tweet “United States soccer success on the world stage remains a dream. The Americans have less than four years to change that before co-hosting the 2026 World Cup.”

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Yes to both questions

And twice upon a time I’ve considered it, but not for a long time and certainly not now.

The first time I raised the subject, my mother pointed out that I’d become eligible for the Vietnam draft!

The second time was in the late Eighties/early Nineties when I had a girlfriend in Toronto and used to work in a digital graphics studio in Boston each summer.

However, life took a sudden and unexpected turn when rethinking my life while recovering from a very serious car crash, I made a successful application to become a university HoD in post-Apartheid S Africa, which in turn shifted my world perspective to the Global South. Today the US and Canada both seem in a much bigger mess than France (although maybe not as bad a s the UK!)

Nevertheless for me, North American English remains so much more inventive than UK English for example compare the literary traditions, or more emphatically the vocabularies of baseball and cricket. The former’s also more pervasive as no US politician would ‘walk out to the crease’, whereas UK ones frequently ‘step up to the plate’, particularly when they’re actually ‘on the back foot’ (a cricketing term now occasionally heard in football commentaries).

Lastly, re earworms: I now have a self-inflicted one after posting a Cab Calloway Utube link on SF.

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ah, yes not young then!

A lot of personal detail, thanks for sharing that - I was kind of guessing the SA employment / possible citizenship (?)

On Cab Calloway - stick to Robert Johnston? admittedly not the same genre :slight_smile:

I do think cricket has given the English language some wonderful phrases in fairly general use (irrespective of possible comparisons with baseball)…:- eg

X has had a good innings
Y was bowled over by the idea of…
A is on a sticky wicket
C was bowled a googly by that question
At the close of play…
That suggestion was hit for six.
Going into bat…

I’m sure there are plenty more…and possibly better ones than the ones above that immediately came to mind…

I’m stumped🤔

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“it’s just not cricket, is it”

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Plays with a straight bat

Oh look pelota players doing some weird ritual :grin: howzat?

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LBW semaphore

:cricket_bat_and_ball:

Aaah MACARENA?

:wink:

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6LIkX0U6f5k

This is one busy Zumba chappy!

Deliberately didn’t click on those links!

“The Macarena Dance…”

image

For some reason I misread and thought it was food-related… :rofl: :rofl:

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And…We’re back!

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After looking it up (not come across it before) it does look a bit like a cousin of Pont l’Eveque … something you don’t ever leave in the car while you do something else :rofl:

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Memorable Maroilles scene in Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis