Foreign secretary Boris Johnson has misspelled and mispronounced Scots Gaelic words for whisky in a speech aimed at increasing the industry’s exports in India.

The foreign secretary quizzed Indian business leaders on their knowledge of Scotland’s national drink in a speech in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Mr Johnson himself came unstuck when attempting to spell and pronounce the Gaelic origins of whisky.

In an attempt to spell and pronounce uisge (water) and uisge beatha (water of life) Johnson instead used uisce, the Irish for whisky, and “uisceaugh”, which is not found in either language.

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The foreign secretary also mispronounced Gaelic, instead using Irish pronunciation when referencing the language.

He told the Indian audience: “It is an extraordinary fact that even though, I don’t think anyone will deny this, that Scotland is incontestably the home, the origin, the progenitor of Scotch whisky, isn’t it?

“The only place in the world where the water trickles through the peaty glen in exactly the right way to turn it into liquid fire.

“And even though whisky is itself, as far as I know, according to Wikipedia derived from a Gaelic word uisce or possibly ‘uisceaugh’, depending on how good your Gaelic is.”

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He added: “Does anyone know what ‘uisceaugh’ means by the way? It means water apparently. They obviously drank a lot of it.

“Even though whisky is incontestably Scottish, the total share of Scotch whisky, authentic whisky, in the Indian markets – the biggest single market in the world for the consumption of premium whisky – the total share is something like 4%. Netting the UK only £80m in exports.”

The foreign secretary said despite the UK being currently a member of the EU and unable to sign trade deals independently both countries could “sketch it out in pencil on the back of an envelope”.

Johnson believes such a future trade deal could increase whisky exports to the country.

His trip to India comes a day after the Prime Minister said the UK intends to leave the European single market and instead go global.

A spokeswoman for the SNP said: “Boris Johnson doesn’t have a clue when it comes to Scotland or the Gaelic language and, as usual, he wasn’t slow to demonstrate his ignorance.

“The public will be surprised that the foreign secretary – with the might of the UK Government behind him – is relying on Wikipedia for his ‘facts’. It makes you wonder if bumbling Boris’s reckless decision-making is frequently informed by a brief skim of Wikipedia.”