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As a Brit, my reaction to a Frenchman is one of disgust as I reach for my insults. Yet there are few countries I would turn to so quickly in the search for a sa
by Normal_gaussian 10y ago
As a Brit, my reaction to a Frenchman is one of disgust as I reach for my insults. Yet there are few countries I would turn to so quickly in the search for a sane and good friend.
Perhaps it is easiest to say:
Where the USA has Russia, we have France. Where the USA has Canada, we have France.
- na85 10y agoDoes it work the other way? I'm Canadian and a huge part of our culture is defined by the ways we are unlike Americans. Can't imagine Anglo-French culture works quite like that.
- genericpseudo 10y agoOh, England and France are entirely about the narcissism of small differences. (Also England and Scotland, hence the Auld Alliance of Scotland and France.)
- fl0wenol 10y agoAnd as an American, I don't know anyone who doesn't like Canada or Canadians, while simultaneously not understanding what makes it different other than basically superficial stuff (i.e. french language, metric, being polite, etc.) So I don't think we have that England/France relationship at all either. It seems pretty special on the world stage. From anyone familiar with it, is New Zealand and Australia's relationship at all similar to either Canada and USA or England and France?
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoNZ/Aus is pretty special. Most analogous to USA/Canada The original point was that Britain/France have the superficial differences that let us be friends (USA/Canada) yet we have some deeper differences and historical differences that let us be enemies (USA/Russia). The nice part of it is that we can carrot and stick ourselves with one neighbour, instead of making our enemy the devil incarnate.
- jboles 10y agoMore like Canada and USA. - At one point New Zealand was part of the colony of New South Wales (until 1841, while the nation of Australia came into being in 1901) - Australia and New Zealand have fought a number of wars together as close allies. - Special visas available for New Zealanders in Australia (and vice versa I believe) - Arch-rivals in sporting matches.
- azernik 10y agoUS-Canada also has that element of small-versus-large - the US looms (I imagine) much larger in the Canadian consciousness than Canada does in the American one, just because the US isn't so defined by that one neighbor. Maybe more like Portugal-Spain? Hard to find examples like that where there haven't been any wars in a couple hundred years, and there's also that linguistic/cultural similarity.