Bridget asked: CapK, are you talking about the French, or the Parisians?
Actually my response didn't address the issue. The Parisians I've met are, on the whole, rude. And rudeness was the basis of my response.
When I said "stupid but logical", what I meant was that they use logic to arrive at places that no one else normally does. When they arrive there, they will defend the position to the death, regardless of its value.
In this instance we were discussing French language purity and the fact that the French are like King Knut/Canute was reputed to have been - defenders of the undefendable. You can no more stop change in language than you can the tides. To try to legislate against adoption of words from other languages does two things: It makes you appear elitist, and if even partially successful, isolates your culture. In this day and age, most countries/languages have realised that. The French, as exemplified by their academics and government, haven't. What does that make them - especially when you take all the rest of their little xenophobic quirks into consideration?
Having said all that, I should point out that I was referring to the culture and its effect on individuals, not individuals' thought processes. I think bel realised that.
If Max ever gets his fan club working to his advantage, he'd probably agree with me that one of NZ's worst traits is the "tall poppy syndrome".
If a Kiwi does well at something, sooner or later there will be an attempt by the culture to cut him or her "down to size". I hate that - it's a hangover from the post-depression era. For fifty years mediocrity was a value that the government encouraged. Sameness and underachievement were used to justify the stultifying economic stagnation engendered by the protectionist, closed-loop "nanny government" approach from the 1930s to the early 1980s. The economic approach died with the National Government in 1984, but the cultural influences just keep on truckin'.
Cheers
