My sincere and heartfelt thanks go out to whichever aid signed off on the despatch of the now infamous 'friendly' letter.
Why? Well as a 'formatrice en anglais' and a native speaker to boot, I get a huge amount of work via companies who realise how important it is to have someone teaching their staff who can actually speak the language they are attempting to teach. I fully expect the ensuing Presidential embarrassment to result in a spike in work. And I might also offer my services to the Huffington Post as they seem to think it would have been ok for M. Hollande to sign off 'Friendly Yours'. When in doubt stick to 'Best Wishes' guys or even a more restrained 'Yours' - random adjectives just don't cut it.
What somehow gets under myskin is the fact that Hollande is the only one who admits to not speaking English, the rest of them - with exceptions like Moscovici - seem to have to make embarassing errors before they are briefed to give up. Sarko had to stop using his and if anyone every heard it... uhh-uhh! Anyway, it is a good honest mistake that the highly paid civil servant who told him to write it is responsible for.
By the way, CH, it is 'aide' not 'aid' before somebody else gets it in. lol! xx
Thank you Paul - yet again reinforcing my point that people without profile photos are invariably the ones to make snarky comments.
You are quite right and I was just about to correct it - however I will leave it there as a warning to any other working mums who pop home at lunchtime to feed the kids, hang the washing out and post on SFN.
Because Obama is the American president and not a close friend of Holland's it would have been proper to sign either " respectfully" or "sincerely." You do have to admit that it was kind of cute.
Used an Internet translator obviously. I thought they would have someone bilingual who checks letters going to a country with another language, just to make sure no acronym is used that might sound strange there. Oups, I forgot, most French admit to speaking English, so they don't need that. lol
