French bed talk help

Wait, wait! Embrasse-moi means ‘kiss me’? :smack: No wonder I didn’t have any luck in Montréal. Or Paris.

That is because you should have said the much more polite “Embrassez-moi” instead if you weren’t on first name basis with the lady and perhaps even then.

It can also mean “embrace me!”

Dispense with the French. Just make like Serge Gainsbourg with Whitney Houston. On national TV, he told her in plain English what he wanted to do to her. You can check it out on Youtube. Mind you, she didn’t appreciate it very much…

Thanks, this will help a lot!

Question for the French-speakers: In an evening of casual sex with someone that you don’t know very well, do you tutoyer or vousvoyer? Does the fact that you’re in bed together automatically make you intimate enough to use “tu” or does the fact that you’re still relative strangers call for “vous”?

As a native speaker, i wouldn’t consider it a reason to change from “tu” to “vous”. I would probably already be telling “tu” before that. But if the “vous” as been kept until the bed, I wouldn’t necessarily change to “tu”.
I mostly say “tu” to younger people or people my age, or friends and family (or in specific company where people ask you to do so). But i must say i have never been in the specific situation you describe, so i guess my answer stays theoretical…

Here you go. Without attributions:

“Tu as une belle chatte.” — “You have a beautiful cat/pussy.”

“Je voudrais te baiser.” — “I would like to fuck you” (or in some contexts “kiss you”, but it’s generally safest to assume that “baiser” as a verb is stronger than that.)

“Mon aéroglisseur est plein des anguilles.” — “My hovercraft is full of eels.”

“vos lobes d’oreilles sont comme tetes de poisson.” — “Your earlobes are like fish heads.”

“J’ai perdu mes dents” — “I’ve lost my teeth.”

“Non, je ne regrette rien”. — “No, I regret nothing” (a classic Edith Piaf song)

And finally, “vous” is the formal second-person singular pronoun, while “tu” is the informal/intimate equivalent.

Kimstu, you missed mine out. :smiley:

OMG jjimm, so I did, and that was far and away the best one!

“Va-te faire enculer avec un chameau dans la tente du bédouin.” — “Go get assfucked by a camel in the Bedouin’s tent.”

Thanks!

To be certain of proper etiquette, when you’re sleeping with a relative stranger, it’s safest to make sure it’s a menage a trois. That way, you can use “vous” with confidence.

That assumes that you’re always going to be addressing both your partners together, and never either of them individually. That could be a little awkward.

(Gary T, that’s because “vous” in French is also the second-person plural pronoun, both formal and informal.)

Probably more useful than anything else so far:

Parlez-vous anglais? – Do you speak English?

Êtes-vous marié? (Are you married?)

Êtes-vous ici avec votre Mari? (Is your husband here?)

Aïe! Oh, ça fait mal! (Ouch! That hurts!)

Missed waffle decider’s post. :frowning:

I think the vouvoiement is on the decline anyway. It is true that I am in Quebec (well, not currently) and it is said that we were traditionally more informal than in France, but it seems to me people always use “tu” with their peers. If I’m trying to pick someone up for casual sex (which I must admit I’ve never done), I wouldn’t think of using “vous” with them.

I’m currently in Bologna, and most advertisements I see use the informal as well, so I guess this decline of the formal isn’t unique to French.

I do wonder how someone who doesn’t know French would know how to pronounce this stuff.

Since the OP is mostly asking for advice rather than specific factual information, this is better suited to IMHO than GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

Nitpick: since you’re addressing a woman, it would be “Êtes-vous mariée?”

(Although it doesn’t make a difference in spoken French, if you write to a woman as if she were masculine, you might annoy her.)

I’m not 100% clueless when it comes to French. I can pick up on keywords here and there. I took core French up until the 9th grade in high school and we never really did much.