On May 2nd, 2018, the 40-year-old French President Emmanuel Macron called Australian leader’s wife delicious and therefore demonstrated the perils of diplomacy in a foreign language. Macron switched between French and English during the press conference held at the end of his state visit to Australia, where he spoke next to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Macron appeared to have made a linguistic slip-up during the concluding part of the presser. Turning to his host, the French leader said a few more words in English to thank the Turnbulls for their hospitality: “I want to thank you for your welcome, thank you and your delicious wife for your warm welcome”. Emmanuel Macron — a former investment banker at Rothschild & Co. who prides himself on his ability to speak English fluently and addressed the U.S. Congress in English one week before — may have misused the word delicious. He picked the word delicious which is generally used for food and sometimes has a sexual connotation, the French word délicieuse is more versatile and, in certain contexts, can be used to mean delightful, lovely or charming.
False friends: avoid the word delicious in this context!
As usual, Macron's unfortunate wording quickly went viral on the internet and social media.
Here is what you can read about it on the BBC News web site:
(Source: BBC News)
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