French President Nicolas Sarkozy is in the UK today. He'll be chatting to Gordon Brown, addressing both Houses of Parliament, and most importantly of all, he'll be meeting the Queen.
This is quite an important visit for the French premier. Back in the Hexagone, detractors accuse him of lacking gravitas, so this is an key opportunity for him to play the dignified statesman abroad.
Of course, there's nothing more dignified than being photographed with the British Royal Family. Ever since the French guillotined their own royals, ours have held a special fascination for them. Sarko will be keen to put on a good performance, and really impress Her Majesty.
Incredibly for a European head of state, Sarko's English isn't really up to scratch. He's apparently been practising it intensively over the past few weeks, so he has something to say to the Queen when he meets her. (She does, however, speak fluent French!)
I wonder if Sarko's language skills will be as impressive as this fellow's:
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Unpresidential behaviour from Sarkozy
Monsieur le Président has been behaving badly. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, was caught swearing on camera yesterday morning. He visited an agricultural fair, and had a bit of a tiff with someone, as you can see from this footage, courtesy of Le Parisien.
He turns up and starts doing exactly what you'd expect a President to do: walking up and down, saying bonjour, shaking hands. Then, somebody heckles him:
Heckler: Ah non, touche moi pas ...
Sarkozy: Casse-toi alors!
Heckler: ... tu me salis!
Sarkozy: Casse-toi alors, pauvre con!
The heckler is shouting "No, don't touch me, you'll dirty me!" The BBC rather generously translates Sarkozy's resonse as "Get lost then you bloody idiot, just get lost!"
My Collins-Robert French Dictionary has a neat little labelling system for French slang words, to help English speakers avoid causing offence (well - more offence than they cause anyway, simply by daring to set foot in France whilst in possession of a UK passport):
* means that whilst it isn't standard French, and not acceptable for essays or formal letters, it's "used by all educated speakers in a relaxed situation".
** means a word should be "handled with extreme care" unless you're totally sure of the company you're in.
*** means "Danger!" - "liable to offend in any situation" - "to be avoided".
"Casse-toi" gets two asterisks, which probably puts it on about the same level as "sod off" in English. "Pauvre con" gets three asterisks, and I suspect the translation "bloody idiot" doesn't quite do it justice.
However you choose to translate the outburst, it really isn't very dignified behaviour for someone who, as Head of State, is supposed to represent his country to the world. You really couldn't imagine the Queen telling anyone to sod off in public, still less call them a - well, whatever translation you've settled on for "pauvre con".
More to the point, it's surprising that somebody could spend as long in politics as Sarkozy has done without learning how to deal with hecklers. He was elected to the Assemblée nationale in his early thirties, and held a number of cabinet posts, including minister for the interior and finance minister. By the time he ran for President, you'd expect he'd have had to deal with a lot of troublemakers, especially in a country with such a colourful and highly polarised political scene as France. Surely the best and most dignified strategy is to ignore them?
UPDATE: I spoke to my language tutor, a native French speaker, about this. She reckons that "pauvre con" is on about the same level as "f***ing idiot". Apparently, putting the "pauvre" in front of it makes it about ten times worse. That's the subtleties of the French language for you.
He turns up and starts doing exactly what you'd expect a President to do: walking up and down, saying bonjour, shaking hands. Then, somebody heckles him:
Heckler: Ah non, touche moi pas ...
Sarkozy: Casse-toi alors!
Heckler: ... tu me salis!
Sarkozy: Casse-toi alors, pauvre con!
The heckler is shouting "No, don't touch me, you'll dirty me!" The BBC rather generously translates Sarkozy's resonse as "Get lost then you bloody idiot, just get lost!"
My Collins-Robert French Dictionary has a neat little labelling system for French slang words, to help English speakers avoid causing offence (well - more offence than they cause anyway, simply by daring to set foot in France whilst in possession of a UK passport):
* means that whilst it isn't standard French, and not acceptable for essays or formal letters, it's "used by all educated speakers in a relaxed situation".
** means a word should be "handled with extreme care" unless you're totally sure of the company you're in.
*** means "Danger!" - "liable to offend in any situation" - "to be avoided".
"Casse-toi" gets two asterisks, which probably puts it on about the same level as "sod off" in English. "Pauvre con" gets three asterisks, and I suspect the translation "bloody idiot" doesn't quite do it justice.
However you choose to translate the outburst, it really isn't very dignified behaviour for someone who, as Head of State, is supposed to represent his country to the world. You really couldn't imagine the Queen telling anyone to sod off in public, still less call them a - well, whatever translation you've settled on for "pauvre con".
More to the point, it's surprising that somebody could spend as long in politics as Sarkozy has done without learning how to deal with hecklers. He was elected to the Assemblée nationale in his early thirties, and held a number of cabinet posts, including minister for the interior and finance minister. By the time he ran for President, you'd expect he'd have had to deal with a lot of troublemakers, especially in a country with such a colourful and highly polarised political scene as France. Surely the best and most dignified strategy is to ignore them?
UPDATE: I spoke to my language tutor, a native French speaker, about this. She reckons that "pauvre con" is on about the same level as "f***ing idiot". Apparently, putting the "pauvre" in front of it makes it about ten times worse. That's the subtleties of the French language for you.
Monday, 15 January 2007
The United Kingdom … of Britain and France?
According to declassified documents which have just been dug out of the National Archives, Britain and France considered uniting in the 1950s. The French press are rather bemused about the stillborn “Union Franglaise”, which comes as something of a shock.
French Prime Minister at the time, Guy Mollet, suggested a union between the two states, as a solution to the political troubles in the middle east, both in Suez and in Israel, which threatened to pit the UK and France against each other. Anthony Eden refused the request, which would presumably have resulted in France becoming the fifth Home Country of the United Kingdom.
After the refusal, Mollet came back with a marginally more sensible request, asking for France to be admitted to the Commonwealth. That would have involved France accepting Her Majesty as their Queen – given the way France treated their last monarch, I’m sure she’d have been delighted by the idea. Having said that, it would have meant tens of thousands of Frogs crawling around my home city of Manchester during the 2002 Commonwealth Games, just when I was doing my French A-level – I wouldn’t have minded that at all!
Apparently Britain was quite keen to have France in the Commonwealth, and offered membership – but M. Mollet quietly changed his mind, the emergence of the EEC made the whole thing redundant anyway, and the entire affair was completely forgotten for over half a century.
The French nationalists are having a fit now, calling the idea of Anglo-French Union “preposterous”. I don’t really blame them. Whatever the unusual political circumstances of the time, I can’t imagine the UK and France, with their wildly different histories and cultures, holding together in a stable union. Things are complicated enough as it is between the Home Countries of the UK, even when we all speak the same language!
Still, there’s some precedent for the cross-Channel alliance – after all, our national anthem, God Save the Queen, is supposed to have been written for French King Louis XIV, after he recovered from an extremely unpleasant thing called an anal fistula. The song made such an impression that it was adopted as the French national anthem, until it was brought over the Channel by the House of Hannover. We’ve been singing it for 260 years, blissfully unaware that it’s really a song about the King of France’s bottom.
Unfortunately, this story is full of historical inconsistencies, and probably complete nonsense. Rather like the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and France!
French Prime Minister at the time, Guy Mollet, suggested a union between the two states, as a solution to the political troubles in the middle east, both in Suez and in Israel, which threatened to pit the UK and France against each other. Anthony Eden refused the request, which would presumably have resulted in France becoming the fifth Home Country of the United Kingdom.
After the refusal, Mollet came back with a marginally more sensible request, asking for France to be admitted to the Commonwealth. That would have involved France accepting Her Majesty as their Queen – given the way France treated their last monarch, I’m sure she’d have been delighted by the idea. Having said that, it would have meant tens of thousands of Frogs crawling around my home city of Manchester during the 2002 Commonwealth Games, just when I was doing my French A-level – I wouldn’t have minded that at all!
Apparently Britain was quite keen to have France in the Commonwealth, and offered membership – but M. Mollet quietly changed his mind, the emergence of the EEC made the whole thing redundant anyway, and the entire affair was completely forgotten for over half a century.
The French nationalists are having a fit now, calling the idea of Anglo-French Union “preposterous”. I don’t really blame them. Whatever the unusual political circumstances of the time, I can’t imagine the UK and France, with their wildly different histories and cultures, holding together in a stable union. Things are complicated enough as it is between the Home Countries of the UK, even when we all speak the same language!
Still, there’s some precedent for the cross-Channel alliance – after all, our national anthem, God Save the Queen, is supposed to have been written for French King Louis XIV, after he recovered from an extremely unpleasant thing called an anal fistula. The song made such an impression that it was adopted as the French national anthem, until it was brought over the Channel by the House of Hannover. We’ve been singing it for 260 years, blissfully unaware that it’s really a song about the King of France’s bottom.
Unfortunately, this story is full of historical inconsistencies, and probably complete nonsense. Rather like the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and France!
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