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Entry: Learning to Love the French Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/learning_to_love_the_french#12564 Post contents: As I spent the first half of my life in New England, I had some exposure to the French Canadians of New England. My Francophobic attitude did not come from my contact with New Englanders of French Canadian descent. My Francophobic attitude from exposure to the French: as a tourist in South America, as a contract engineer for a French company in South America, and from having had a French roommate in the US. I have heard from others who have worked with or for French companies, be they US citizens or Latin Americans, who have had the same reaction to the French that I had: aloof and/or arrogant. An example follows of the gap between French and American society, from French tourists in South America with whom I got along fairly well. A French woman, who was not aloof and arrogant to me, informed me that French friends who had hitchhiked around the US had been invited to the homes of some of the drivers who had picked them up hitching. This was also my experience as a hitchhiker from that epoch. The French woman informed me that there was something sick about Americans, that they would be so friendly to a stranger to invite them to their homes. So much for the frontier spirit. At the same time, greater reserve towards strangers compared to Americans- of both continents- is not merely a French trait, but a European trait. Sent at: 2008 11 23