On November 10, 1871, after a nightmarish expedition through tropical forests that took eight months and required two hundred porters, covering eleven hundred miles, the British explorer Morton Stanley at last found Dr. David Livingston, another explorer who had lost contact with the outside world for six years.
“Dr. Livingston, I presume,” Stanley was alleged to have said.
A guest blog posting is herewith offered to anybody who can imagine a comparable greeting that Pauline Marois, the new separatist premier of Quebec, may have extended, in French, to Prime Minister Stephen Harper when they met for the first time at the XIVth summit of La Francophonie on October 13 in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Please do better than “René Lévesque, je suppose?”
Votre nom, s’il vous plait?
La jungle, c’est a propos n’est-ce pas?
Hard to do better than the cartoonist Low with Molotov and Ribbentropp: http://www.guardian.co.uk/pictures/image/0,8543,-10104410005,00.html (though Mr Harper and Mme Marois are neither in that league, of course).
* ‘Monsieur le fabricant de prisons, sans doute?’
* ‘Cible de toutes mes flèches, bonjour!’
“Avez-vous trouvez Schwartz deli d’ congo Stephen?”
“Je comprendre vous trouvez Schwartz deli d’ congo Stephen? Mais-Oui!”
“Stephen, cadeaux pour moi? Non Mme, cadeaux pour tous la monde. J’ai ici Malédiction locale pour la Parti Liberal!”
Excusez-moi pour ma Grammaire.
The earth-shaking brilliance of all the participants has unfortunately made it impossible for me to declare a winner. Each of hem may now propose a guest-blog. I will consider it provided it is in good taste.
Surely it must be in French?
Oh no. Good taste is universal.