Tbf I also think it’s annoying to be refered to as "the Dutch" when it's about the government.

Kind of a nonsensical response by the french embassy, embassy isn't referring to "the French" French is a adjective there.

The author of that tweet came from London.

Did the AP learn the lesson? Only the time will tell.

Of course they do.

For what it's worth, this problem wouldn't happen in French. It's perfectly acceptable to say "les traitres, les fourbes, les perfides, les anglais".

Even taking the AP’s claim about how bad it is to say “the X” on face value for the sake of argument - I don’t understand how the tweet was “inappropriate” specifically for saying “the French” when they were using it as an example. What did they themselves find inappropriate about “the French” specifically in that tweet that wasn’t inappropriate about “the poor”?

This is a serious question lol. If it was offensive even for them to say “the French” in an example, then why didn’t they apologize for all the other examples they gave

come on guys it isn't "The French" it is "Person experiencing Frenchness."

There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures and THE DUTCH. -Nigel Powers

There are two kinds of people I can't stand: Those who are intolerant of other cultures...and the Dutch

I hate nothing more than racists, and gypsies.

Ridiculous overreaction. Does the French embassy’s spokesperson understand what AP is talking about? Their embassy is already the Embassy of France. And the alternative to “the French” (noun) would be “French people.”

AP should have just left the tweet alone, frankly.

TLDR: French people got easily offended again

*individual afflicted with the French.

You would be too if you were as irrelevant as the French and their country.

I don't understand how English works--and I'm a native speaker. It's perfectly proper English to say "The French", "The English", or "The Dutch" when referring to the people of those countries. But it is not proper English to say "The American", "The German", "The Canadian" when referring to people of those countries. Am I missing something? Is it a simple matter of the words ending in an "h" vs. "n"?

The grammar is confusing.

Edit: to be clear, my comment is about grammar, not whether it is appropriate to use those terms to refer to people groups.

Not sure what the rule is but they usually have a word after. The American people/gov or just the Americans. The H thing is interesting though, Americans or Germans is right but Frenchs is mustard and Englishs sound like Golem.

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I hadn’t thought about it before, but it does have to do with the ending. Nationalities ending in ‘-n’ get an ‘-s’ added to them, and I think all of the others don’t (at least the ones I could think of).

Examples German - the Germans French - the French English - the English Japanese - the Japanese Swiss- the Swiss

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there are exceptions though (like everything else in English).

So they either changed their minds, or AP just got peer pressured to reverse a position.

Heh.

*trapped in a French body

Not as irrelevant as your education clearly.

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It honestly probably brought more attention to what they were trying to point out, as explained in the article. If you could edit tweets, they could have just changed "the poor" or "the disabled" to something like "the college educated" or other positive state rather than something with an inherently negative connotation. I thought the reaction was pretty funny though. "Suffering from Frenchness" is a great phrase.

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> But it is not proper English to say "The American", "The German", "The Canadian" when referring to people of those countries.

You can absolutely say "the Americans and the Canadians fought the Germans during WWII".

Doesn't seem like that lol think they just pointed our the humor in it

It was a joke change

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