#3 - to have sex

That's right.  The language of love does not have an equivalent for this phrase.  But how could they not have a word for something so basic and so...French?  It's impossible, right?  Well, here are the most common words and phrases they do have for it:

faire l'amour - to make love
baiser - to f***
avoir des relations sexuelles  (or rapports sexuels) - to have sexual relations

*Note: Of course, there are a bajillion different slang terms and euphemisms that I could list as well, but that would take forever, so I'm just gonna stick with the basics for this post.  


As you might've noticed, all three of these phrases, like their English counterparts, have very different connotations.

The first one, faire l'amour, is inherently romantic.

The second, baiser, is rather vulgar.  (Though, oddly enough, it can also mean simply "to kiss," depending on the context.  Baiser la main means "to kiss the hand," for example).

The third one, just like in English, is reserved primarily for doctors, newscasters, and other awkwardly official sorts of situations.

Which means that, in French, there isn't really a neutral, yet informal, word for having sex.  Granted, they do have the phrase coucher avec quelqu'un, which translates into "sleep with someone," and we use that phrase in English too.  But it's still not quite the same thing.

It was a French guy who first brought my attention to this lexical gap, saying he regretted the fact that there wasn't a more neutral way to talk about sex in French--a way of implying, "we slept together, and it wasn't love, but I still the respect the person."

This is just my interpretation, but I feel like there's an element behind this basic English phrase that's very straight-forward and pragmatic--rather in keeping with English culture.  The English want to be able to just say it like it is, without always having to either dress it up or dress it down (so to speak) by making it sound either romantic or primitive.  I feel like the French language in general has an inherent tendency to romanticize things...but if I go into that topic I'd have to write a whole doctoral thesis, so I'll just leave it there for now.

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P.S.  In case you can't tell by my spellings and/or word usage, I am actually American.  So if any real English people wanna agree, disagree, or get on my case for stereotyping their culture, please feel free to do so in the comments!  Same goes for French people.  :-)