Nearly every day, I have people telling me they’re good in bed.

While I’m up for a bit of sex positivity in everyday life, I’m not sure I need to hear quite so often what wizards people are entre les draps*.

So how do they come to tell me that? Read on…

It really is the most innocuous question that unleashes the boasting from our Chouchous*:

Ça va* ?

There is a whole host of mild and discreet responses to that enquiry, and yet our keen students seem to default to:

Je suis bon, or
Je suis bonne.

Whether you’re male or female, the message you’re sending is clear. You are good (at it) and it doesn’t take a lot of mental gymnastics to work out what ‘it’ is.

The clue to the best answer lies in the question itself. Ça va literally means how are you going, so stick to the verb aller in your reply. Je vais bien, merci tells the person you’re going well, and that’s probably the limit of what they want to hear about you anyway.

PS, you can also say (among many other options):

Ça va.
Ça va bien, merci.
Bien, merci.
Très bien, merci.

In the last article, we reminded you not to pronounce the ‘s’ on the word ans (years). Now we’re going to ask you to focus on the verb, because unlike English where we ‘are’ our years, the French ‘have’ theirs.

J’ai 28 ans.

Literally: I have 28 years.
Colloquially: I’m 28.

When talking about your daily routine, you may be tempted to say dans le matin for ‘in the morning’. For example:

Dans le matin, je fais de la meditation.

However, you really don’t need the word dans. It’s surplus to requirements as le matin means ‘in the morning’ all by itself. So say instead:

Le matin, je fais de la meditation*.

By the way, this is also true for le soir (in the evening) and l’après-midi (in the afternoon).

When it comes to talking about your weekends, the same rule applies.

No need to ever say sur le weekend thinking it means ‘on the weekend’. Le week-end (note the hyphen in French) will suffice.

Le week-end, j’aime sortir avec mes amis*.

We covered this a little while ago, but it does bear repeating. Once you’ve tamed your response to ça va by answering je vais bien instead of je suis bon(ne), you probably will want to respond in kind by asking the other person how they’re going.

Remember, it’s not:

Et tu ?

It is always:

Et toi ?

Unless you’re speaking to someone in a formal manner in which case it would be:

Et vous ?

Next time, we’ll look at some more advanced errors people make, but I really hope you’re finding it useful to clean up these petite bêtises* along the way.

À très bientôt*.

How to Learn French - low-hanging fruit.