zlacker

> From commoners to heads of state, the queen has been known to smooth over embarrassing situations with a gentle quip or two. According to Blaikie, at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, a woman was chatting with the queen when her cell phone embarrassingly started ringing. “You’d better answer that,” the queen told her. “It might be someone important.”

> Then there was the notorious incident that occurred during Charles and Madame de Gaulle’s state visit to Buckingham Palace. “Somebody asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking forward to in her retirement, which was imminent,” Blaikie writes. “Not speaking English much at all, she replied, ‘A penis.’ Consternation reigned for some time but it was the queen herself who came to the rescue. ‘Ah, happiness,’ she said.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/behind-queen-elizab...

>>mcbish+(OP)
Aw, may she rest in peace. :(

>>mcbish+(OP)
The Madame de Gaulle story is apocryphal: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/happiness-envy/

>>hn_thr+Xp
It's in any case unlikely for a French speaker to mispronounce "happiness" as "a penis".

>>seszet+lH
happiness => 'appinesss => a penis

>>seszet+lH
In French, the initial 'h' is mute. Here is "hospital" in French as an example. See the "Pronunciation" section.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/h%C3%B4pital

So the occurrence is quite possible.

>>danuke+CY
Well, I'm actually a French speaker and what makes me say that is the "a" in happiness that is IMO never going to be pronounced by a French speaker the same way as the "a" in "a penis".

The "e" might get pronounced as the "I" in penis by a good enough English speaker, but probably not by a bad English speaker.

I also believe that stress would be totally different, put only on the "a" by a French speaker.

>>seszet+lH
Even some English speakers omit the H, 'appiness. Give it a little inflection and you've got yourself a penis. I did watch a French burlesque show that had a comedy bit based in on this very mispronunciation, but that may well have been contrived.

>>hn_thr+Xp
Alas. Well, the phone-call story alone makes me a fan of the queen.