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What does one call a collection of French students? I have always found group names quite interesting, such as a ‘crash’ of rhinos, ‘school’ of fish, a ‘gaggle’ of geese, a ‘stupidity’ of politicians, a ‘conspiracy’ of lawyers, etc… but what is a collection of French students to be called? Perhaps an ‘unreasonableness‘? Or would it be a ‘perversity’? Or maybe a ‘delusion’ of French students?
Three hundred thousand of them were protesting and/or rioting because of attempts to change the laws that make no business in their right mind want to hire them in the first place. This is because if they turn out to be indolent layabouts, a company is still not allowed to fire them. So, as unemployment approaches 10% in France (or quite a bit higher according to some), demonstrating that something is just a tad wrong with the ways things work in France, these clever chappies want to motivate employers to continue to not hire people. Outstanding.
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And, just for once in Europe, not a single McDonalds got torched in the riot. The French students, quite aptly given the nature of the protest, torched cerebral book shops instead.
May I suggest perhaps a ‘twaddle‘ (as in stupidity) of students, although I doubt anything can ever beat ‘a murder of crows‘ for sheer imaginery.
I don’t entirely agree with you, Perry. It is true that employment protection laws in France are a major contributor to high unemployment and that removal of these laws would encourage employers to take on employees.
However, the problem with the proposed legislation in France is that it specifically treats younger (up to age 26) employees differently. So when an employer needs to cut back, they will get rid of younger workers first, regardless of merit. In fact, they may even get rid of employees just before they reach 26 and hire younger ones to replace them, in order to avoid them acquiring employment rights. Conversely, it may make them more reluctant to hire older workers and thus discriminate against them in the jobs market.
The solution is to relax employment protection rules for all, not just for younger workers as anything else represents a distortion in the market and the law of unitended conssequences will come into play.
Une stupidité des étudiants.
Out of interest can anyone explain what the current French law is on terminating employment. For instance if an employer wants to fire someone do they have to have the approval of a Government body ? Also what (if any) are the allowed reasons for firing someone ?
HJHJ, but unless I am mistaken, they were not demonstrating for the removal of such ‘protections’ for older employees (if they were, I take it all back!), butv rather just demanding in favour of the status quo, so I stand by my remarks.
May I suggest a ‘flapdoodle’ of French students.
HJHJ: Yes, equality is important, but this is a step in the right direction. Based on how the French citizenry consistently reacts to proposals such as this one, I am sure the primary reason these youths are pissed is because they want to slack on the job. In fact, if they are also talking about the inequality of the law, they are surely saying that those over the age (25 I think?) that this law affects have the better upshot of the policy. Ironic, but unsurprising.
And it’s 300k not 30k, Perry. 😛
While I’d normally just say that calling them “French” students is enough adjective to communicate the context intended (though given the existence of my friends at Liberte Cherie Int’l, I may need to reconsider that), if one wants a name for a flock of them I’d say “a Twittle” as a play on twaddle is a good choice.
However, when specifically talking about a group of specifically French students, I’d honor the French absurdist Albert Camus with this unitary designation, especially given the similarity of his last name with “campus”. Therefore, the proper term would be a “Camus” of French students. I hereby nominate it for consideration. Is there a second? Take a vote?
I had always heard it was a “conspiracy” of Jews rather than lawyers (or maybe it was Jewish lawyers!) Might I also nominate a “guilt” of Catholics, a “humourlessness” of Protestants, a “smothering” of mothers, an “inebriation” of footballers, a “deception” of politicians and a “vacuity” of Big Brother participants.
A meme worth propagating.
How about: London waiters?
I’m not sure that it doesn’t make sense for the students to protest. If they’re the students who want to protest, there’s a good chance that they’ll be the “political” types who’ll want to redistribute income and work for the state. Resistance on all fronts isn’t always the wrong response. I mean, it’s the wrong response here, because their views are wrongful, but given their views it is not necessarily stupid for them to take this action (although it is obnoxious).
Just to be clear, I’m guessing that their actions will be reasonably effective at slowing reform across the board, and hence protecting their future jobs in an unreformed civil service.
My favorite collective noun: an ‘unkindness’ of ravens. The second fav: ‘murder’ of crows, as mentioned before.
‘Unreasonableness’ is too much of a mouthful. How about just ‘unreasonness’ of French?
TWG
Of course, many of the students protesting are those among the elite in elite schools. Their unemployment is decently low, much lower than the non-elite. When employers can’t fire, they resort to only hiring students with elite pedigrees as the next best thing. For these students, that works out well. Pass tests and get into the best schools and you’re set for life.
So for many of these students, this was perfectly self-interested. They aren’t the poor schmucks who didn’t get into good schools and will be frozen out, with no one willing to take a chance on them.
As far as the students are concerned… when they make the news, it’s usually on account of a riot. Thus, “a riot of students” would be correct.
BTW, the “Internal Server Error” has returned.
Julian Taylor posted the following comment.
Actually, a McDonalds got damaged in the riots, I believe.
Perhaps I missed the obvious suggestion in earlier posts: “a protest of French students.”
For some years now, ever since hearing the absolute inability of students to articulate(unless they are dangerous, ‘alpha’ sociopaths),I have referred to them as ‘Stush”.
Nothing will ever beat “a shrewdness of apes”. But what about, “an apoplexy of Islamists”?
Nah, that would be a ‘detonation’ of Islamists.
Given their penchant for wrecking the place, and the French love of Derrida, I would propose a deconstruction of students.
How about a “Rabble”, or maybe a “Motley collection”.
Just from a linguistic point of view, I’d vote for complete abolition of group nouns, as a bad example of language designed purely to be a smartarse (rather like the rule not to split infinitives).
Try saying “ooo look – there’s a parliament of owls” when you’re walking in the park. Or even writing it in a book in a non-ironic context.
If you must, you could call it a Josébové, being a general term for noisy political backwardness.
I nominate a troop of cheese eating surrender monkeys.
Protestors don’t really need an excuse to protest, I mean, who else has time to make all those signs and banners except studients and the unemployed. A good street riot is the highlight of a welfare bum’s week. Thankfully the anglo world never had a revolution which classed collectivity (ie. fraternity) up there with liberty and equality.
I nominate a troop of cheese eating surrender monkeys.
That’s used for a group of French politicians. We are discussing what to call a group of French students.
😉
Some years ago now I remember Japanese (might have been Korean) communists students rioting.
I was most struck by how the riot police moved out in tightly packed organized units and starting to roll up the riot, the front row really beating on the rioters with big sticks. brutal.
Then, to my astonishment, the communists students suddenly starting yelling and running around and formed up themselves into their own phalanx (and “out of nowhere” acquired armour and sticks) and counter charged. They broke up and dispersed the first police unit, but then a second police unit emerged from the side street, and student phalanx _pivoted_ to face it. ooooh. THAT takes practice and skill. Riveting TV.
Now those were students rioters I could respect.
A plan, practiced tactics, smooth execution.
These french kids only get away with thier stupidity because the government doesn’t have the balls to maintain order.
French students, and French people in general, are inclined, when travelling abroad, to wander around in great gangs. When they pause to adjust their gussets, scratch themselves, pick their noses, touch each other up or indulge in some other of the peculiarly Gallic past-times they favour, they always pause in a doorway, on a staircase, at a street corner, or anywhere that they can cause inconvenience or obstruction. For that reason I would suggest a “blockage” of French students.
If it were any old students rather than specifically French ones, then a “pointlessness” or a “gormlessness” of students would probably suit.
French students?
How about
A desultation of french students
A melancholy of…
A lemming of …
a cluster-fcuk of …
a phallus of …
Sounds like Horace’s student days are several decades behind him.
Horace, you could take it further and say a ‘barricade’ of french students. Leaving blockage free for describing the rest of the french.
A vacance of French students, surely.
Perry,
I find it hard to believe that there would have been a student protest had the changes not applied SPECIFICALLY to their age group. The common strand (whatever their individual views on employment protection) is obviously that it is proposed to treat them differently under the law. Had the same changes been proposed for all age groups, many students perhaps would not have liked the changes, but in this respect they would have been no different from the rest of the population and they may just have grumbled and accepted it (as students do when it comes to many things in society that they don’t like).
If I was facing a change in the law that meant that my employer was more likely to sack me than my colleagues simply because I was under 26, I’d might be unhappy too.
A snivel of french students for me.
The rioters with the student phalanx would definitely have to be Korean. Korean riots are a kind of theatre, where the rioters often have uniforms, helmets, and cudgels. I remember seeing a picture of a riot where the rioters all had identical headbands and identical blue sticks.
The whole thing usually ends with bruises and a few broken bones when everyone gets tired. It’s pretty much a yearly spring ritual that everyone ignores, but when it turned ugly and a few people died in 1996, it was BIG NEWS.
Oh, and Korean rioters rarely damage shops or burn cars. What would be the point of that?
Some fun reading on the subject here.
A Gaggle of Geese
Ergo
A Mongaggle of Mongeese
To amplify upon Horace Dunn’s suggestion to call a grouping of french students a ‘blockage’, I’d suggest altering that to a ‘constipation’ of french students instead.
Two reasons, it’s the same word in French and English, plus they’re french, and therefore usually walk around with a constipated look on their faces anyway.
Of those already proposed, I like “camus” ideally, but I think “twaddle” is more easily propogated into the collective unconscious.
On the subject of the subject of the protests, I always found it amusing that there was such high unemployment in a country where it is realistically impossible to be unemployed. They’ve got it all figured out, don’t they?
Eric, it’s a nice reading. “there would be no point in burning…”. In France, the point is French extreme left has reasonable hopes to impose dictatorship on us, and they expect the support of the new non-occidental French masses.
Ben, “Mongaggle” sounds like “giggling” + “gag”, fine for me.
How about a simplism of French students?
And, of course, an indignation of leftists.
The students are stupid, because slightly reducing the regulations (which is what the “new contract” does) would mean it was more likely they could find a job.
More importantly, the students are evil – they are evil because they wish to use the threat of violence (regulations) to impose various burdens on other people (the employers, and their staff and customers).
So the students are both stupid and evil.
There are very many such people – all over the world.
How about a stench of French students?
Alternatively: a revoltingness, a noisomeness, a sewer, a live in their parents basement until they’re 50, an unemployed unjustified superiority, a we should never have given them their damn country back the first time never mind the second, an Elizabeth should be restored to her ancestral lands, a dhimmi, an idiot’s going to feel bad in 10 years for making fun of beurs when they run the country and are invading Israel with the sociologist natives in the front ranks, a bunch of punks who are going to wakeup with their country owned by the English (nice country houses) and the Indians (surviving multinationals).
Excluding, of course, Sabine and her friends and followers.