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Mar 13, 2024 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
Ne dit-on pas que la fin justifie les moyens ? Dans sa volonté de couper l’herbe sous les pieds de l’extrême droite, le gouvernement français avait concocté l’an dernier un ensemble de dispositions législatives visant à contrôler et freiner l’immigration. Parmi les mesures envisagées figurait une restriction de l’accès à la nationalité française. Pour rappel, cette dernière s’acquiert à l’heure actuelle de deux façons.
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Mar 7, 2024 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
It is a well-known fact that French is the “language of Molière,” just as English is the language of Shakespeare, and German and Spanish are the languages of Goethe and Cervantes. Yet if a French speaker were to delve into the original text of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme or Les Fourberies de Scapin, they would understand very little. Words, grammar, spelling, and even pronunciation have changed enormously.
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Feb 21, 2024 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
For many French people, the word banlieue is not an enchanting one. It conjures up images of underprivileged – not to say squalid – suburban areas, far from services and overrun by drug dealers. It often refers to places of ill-repute, towns to which immigrants and the country’s very poorest are relegated. And banlieue does sound similar to bannissement (“banishment”), but the etymology paints an entirely different picture.
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Feb 15, 2024 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
On February 21, the ashes of Missak Manouchian and his wife Mélinée will be transferred to the Pantheon, the emblematic Parisian monument in the heart of the Latin Quarter, named after the temples the Greeks and Romans dedicated to all their gods (pan, “all,” and theos, “god,” in Greek). Exactly 80 years to the day after his execution, the Armenian-born freedom fighter will be honored for his heroic commitment to battling Nazi occupiers during World War II.
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Jan 23, 2024 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
Familier des sorties hasardeuses, le président Emmanuel Macron mettait en opposition, en août 2018 à Copenhague, les Danois, « peuple luthérien » ouvert aux réformes, et les Français, qu’il qualifiait de « Gaulois réfractaires au changement ». Que vaut donc aux ancêtres des Français cette réputation de rebelles irréductibles ?
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Dec 28, 2023 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
Il est des mots qui, entre tous, ont une sonorité enchanteresse. C’est le cas de réveillon. Probablement parce qu’il rime avec flonflon, lampion et cotillon, termes évoquant des moments festifs. Au départ, pourtant, il ne s’agit que d’un dîner pris tardivement. Et ce, à quelque moment de l’année que ce soit. Car « réveillon » vient tout simplement du verbe réveiller qui, faut-il le rappeler, signifie « tirer du sommeil » et, à la forme pronominale (« se réveiller »), « sortir du sommeil ».
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Dec 5, 2023 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
Beset by countless social conflicts, France is continuing to air its contradictions and domestic tensions for all the world to see. The Yellow Vest movement in 2018-2019 was followed by unrest linked to pension reform in the first half of 2023. This summer then saw urban riots sparked by the death of Nahel, a French-Algerian teenager from a poor suburb, who was shot by a police officer on June 27.
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Aug 29, 2023 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
As the end of the summer approaches in France every year, a number of questions are on everyone’s lips. What will la rentrée have in store? What will the socio-economic climate be? How many strikes and labor union marches will be held? Everyone generally predicts a miserable – or even explosive – month to come. What the French refer to as la rentrée, literally “the return,” corresponds to the period in September when economic and social activities start back up after the summer break.
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Aug 9, 2023 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
On May 14, 2011, people across the world were shocked to see images of a haggard Dominique Strauss-Kahn leaving a New York City police precinct with his hands cuffed behind his back. Like a petty thief or a dangerous criminal! The managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a major French politician pipped to be the next president had been accused of sexual assault by an employee at the Sofitel in Manhattan. But he had not even been charged.
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Aug 1, 2023 | 
france-amerique.com | Dominique Mataillet
What weather should we expect this summer? Will we have to deal with the same intense heat as last year? This period was particularly catastrophic. In France alone, some estimates put the number of people who died as a direct result of the hot weather at around 3,000. And the French were not the worst hit – far from it. The higher temperatures recorded globally in recent years have been accompanied by deadly natural disasters across the world.
