Word: french
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...recent poll that asked the French where they would prefer to live in the year 2000, older respondents put the U.S. second, after Switzerland, and those under 22 listed the U.S. first. Indeed, where some French youths once looked romantically toward Peking or Havana, they now dream of the jobs and joys of California...
Much of the new respect for America emanates from the French President's office. After his return from the U.S. last spring, Francois Mitterrand praised the "genius" of Steven Jobs, 29-year-old founder of Apple Computer, and ordered his Cabinet to simplify the procedures for setting up new companies. Gaston Defferre, Minister for Planning, flew to Pittsburgh in November to pursue an agreement with Carnegie-Mellon University, which heads a 17-campus consortium that offers French firms direct access to U.S. research in automated manufacturing, robotics, artificial intelligence and computer- based education. "In Gaullist times French identity...
...revival of the U.S. economy has played a large part in influencing French views. Says Paul Horne, Paris-based chief economist for Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co., a U.S. brokerage and investment house: "The U.S., with its strong recovery, its capacity for creating jobs, its enduring technological lead, has become the focus of fascination in the French economic world." At the same time, many French people have become disenchanted with the Soviets. Says Francois Lagrange, a senior counselor in the French Premier's office: "They cannot provide a high standard of living. They do not make marketable inventions. They cannot...
...1960s, says University of Paris Political Scientist Olivier Duhamel, French intellectuals identified imperialism with the U.S. "Now they not only identify imperialism with the Soviet Union, they are even beginning to identify anti-imperialism with the U.S." Not just Marxism, but the very idea of "collectivism" has waned in the French academic mind. "Pluralism," "individualism," "the limits of public power" are all increasingly in vogue...
...been handing out fines of up to $700 to firms that fail to translate American words like hamburger (bifteck hache) and show biz (industrie du spectacle). Officials are busy coining replacements for such computer terms as hardware (materiel) and software (logiciel). While the language may be under assault, French pride--and what would France be without it?--remains / indestructible. "We find it hard to admit direct American influence," says Duhamel with a smile. "In the classroom, for instance, instead of admitting that we have rediscovered the American Revolution, we tend to say we have rediscovered Alexis de Tocqueville, who dissected...