How's it going, Mal? Why Australians can get away with familiarity but French schoolboys can't
On Monday this week French President Emmanuel Macron was greeting some high school students at a ceremony in western Paris to commemorate General Charles De Gaulle’s call for resistance in the second world war. It became an unlikely lesson in French manners. Greeting a group of boys, Macron said to them, “Ça va?”, a phrase you’d use with your friends or people you know well to mean “How are you?”. A boy, who’d tried to catch the president’s attention by singing the Socialist anthem, The Internationale, then shouted “Ça va, Manu?”. “Manu” is the shortened form of “Emmanuel”. He certainly got Macron’s attention. The president responded: No, no, no, I’m not your mate, no. You’re here at an official ceremony, you behave comme il faut [as befits the situation]. You can carry on like an idiot, but today’s about The Marseillaise and the Song of the Partisans. You call me “Mr President of the Republic” or “Sir”, OK?