Dropped "h" causes trouble for France's Kouchner Mon Oct 06 19:42:54 UTC 2008
PARIS (Reuters) - A dropped 'h' landed English-speaking French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in trouble on Sunday after he was mistakenly quoted as saying Israel could gobble up Iran if it wanted to. "I honestly don't believe that it will give any immunity to Iran ... because you will eat them before," Kouchner was quoted by Israel's Haaretz newspaper as saying in an interview about the possibility of Tehran gaining a nuclear weapon. But the French Foreign Ministry issued a brief statement later saying Koucher had said 'hit' -- meaning carrying out a surgical pre-emptive strike -- rather than 'eat'. "He regrets the unfortunate misunderstanding this phonetic confusion has caused," the ministry said. The letter 'h' is silent in French and many French people inadvertently drop it when speaking English. The foible gave rise to the "Allo, Allo" title of a British Broadcasting Corp television comedy about wartime France and colors the accent of the blundering Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films. (Reporting by Marcel Michelson and Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem; Editing by Richard Balmforth) This service is not intended to encourage spam. The details provided by your colleague have been used for the sole purpose of facilitating this email communication and have not been retained by Thomson Reuters. Your personal details have not been added to any database or mailing list. If you would like to receive news articles delivered to your email address, please subscribe at www.reuters.com/newsmails (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world. Quotes and other data are provided for your personal information only, and are not intended for trading purposes. Thomson Reuters and its data providers shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the quotes or other data, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. -- My new videos on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2TwYYCgUb8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONxCgc0tXQU --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "English Learner's Cafe" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/english_learners?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
