The French use the term "le weekend" all the time. In French, it is le fin de semaine". There is the Institute Nacional de la Langue Français that publishes a dictionary that everyone accepts as the authority, Most of the extreme linguistic nationalism is in Quebec, where the Francophone majority was dumped upon by les Anglaises for a couple of centuries. I had a French girlfriend for about five years and visited with her family both here and in France. Her older brother was a retired postman and member of the largely Communist CGT (Confederation Général des Travailleurs). I found it interesting that he spends most of his time sitting at his beautiful antique table in his beautiful and comfy chair, watching American Soap Operas in French. From time to time, old pals drop by with bottles of wine from tiny estates, which he stores for them in a huge wine cellar. It is exceptionally good wine, by the way. Some of the older labels are handwritten.
Politics makes very strange bedfellows. My girlfriend's first husband was a pied noir of mostly Italian descent who was born in Algeria. The Communists were in favor of turning Algeria over to the Algerians, but were opposed to the French-speaking mostly Christian pieds noirs settling in France, because the pieds noirs were politically rightists, because the French right wing wanted to keep Algeria as a province of France. De Gaulle was sort of their hero until he turned against them and withdrew France from Algeria.
This was strange, because most of the French that settled in Algerie were deported there for being leftists (Communards) by Louis Napoleon in the 1850's. Later, Italian leftists were allowed to encouraged to settle there to increase the number of Europeans. My girlfriend's husband was a diesel mechanic who could not find work in France and they migrated to Quebec, which she hated because it was too cold. So they migrated to Ft Lauderdale in the 1960's, where he worked for Broward County and was known as "Frenchie" and drove a truck with a frog on the front license plate. He ate lots of red meat, drank way too much, spent most evenings at a bar and died of lung cancer at the age of 57.
It seems pretty clear that the French did a good job of running Algeria for the pieds noirs. It is likely that the Algerians would also have been better off as a part of France as well. The Algerian government is oppressive and incompetent. But it is clearly Algerian.
The French are not rude, quite hospitable, but very proud of being French. I think they believe in French Exceptionalism.
