Discussion: Faux Pas: Macron Calls Aussie PM's Wife 'Delicious'

Trumpitis is apparently highly contagious…

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No wonder Donald likes him so much. Similar tastes, literally!

This is a comical, but straightforward, case of “lost in translation”. In French, it is a common and innocuous compliment to say that a woman or girl is “delicieux”, which more or less means lovely, charming, etc. A few years ago when I lived in Paris and was part of a bilingual conversation group, a very proper French mother complimented me (In English) on how “delicious” my 9 year old daughter was. She was mortified when I explained the very sexual connotations of such a phrase in English.

Macron is actually rather prone to these minor translation errors when he speaks English (which he does with greater fluency than our president, of course).

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Dang it, you stole my comment (in spirit, if not in actually identical phrasing)!!

The quite tragic thing is that, the better your fluency in a language other than the one(s) you grew up speaking, the more people make the erroneous assumption that you understand all of the subtleties. If you speak relatively brokenly, people will far more often assume you may not exactly have meant what you said and give you the benefit of the doubt. But if you have learned well, they assume you understand all of the nuances as well.

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Aaaaaaaand, guess what I just Googled.

Guess.

Alas, dude has a thing for grannies. Fucking weirdo.

Just can’t keep old Pepe Le Pew down.

Not so ‘delicious’. Must have been lost in translation.

Either way, Sen Gillabrand was just seen boarding a flight to Australia! The horror, the horror!

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“Zees Trump - always boasting of his cats! Telling me to touch them at the time that I so wished! And yet, in ze American Capitol - not one cat did I see.”

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Oh, Manny, you Gallic galavanter. C’est delicieux!

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Happens all the time speaking a second language. The French cognate means “charming” or “delightful” to them when applied to a person.

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I so miss these types of “faux pass”. It assumes a situation when a person was out of their comfort zone. Which in turn assumes the person has a comfort zone. A field where they are an expert on something. Where they don’t have to lie their way thru… Instead I get to endure the moron Trump, his family, his entire administration and the most of the Republican legislature. For what sins?

Now I’ll go dig some trenches. It will be uplifting after this.

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I studied French and still speak it passably. At one point while in college I was trying to describe how excited I was about something, and when I said “Je suis excite,” my professor took me aside to explain that, in French, “excite” does not mean excited, but rather aroused. I’m certain that I was beet red.

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