French for sailors

A colleague, who has a French mother, was meeting up with his extended family in France. He said in French to his 90 odd year old Great Aunt give me a kiss. Unfortunately, the word for kiss in French is very similar to the French for f.ck. The room fell silent.
 
A colleague, who has a French mother, was meeting up with his extended family in France. He said in French to his 90 odd year old Great Aunt give me a kiss. Unfortunately, the word for kiss in French is very similar to the French for f.ck. The room fell silent.

Bit difficult to top that:o
 
Oh, 'bouge ta viande'. 'Move your ass', with a bit of a sexual connotation. Perhaps the erudite Sybarite will drop by to refine my appreciation, if not my language.

Possibly. However I have never heard anybody actually using it and especially not amongst boaters where courtesy is the watchword in France.
 
Oh, 'bouge ta viande'. 'Move your ass', with a bit of a sexual connotation. Perhaps the erudite Sybarite will drop by to refine my appreciation, if not my language.

I cant say I know a whole lot of conversational French. But I can read packets. Avec formage, Poulet, Viande.

Viande usually is some kind of meet. I think Chevaux

I think Ass would be some kind of Cheval instead of Chevaux:)
 
Surely the British way is to shout at them slowly in English?

After all, not your fault the chap is too dense to speak English.

Seen this tactic in use all over "the continent". Same individuals are normally outraged I've got a better berth, paid less and had less interaction with the local Douanier, Zollbeamter, Aduanas....
 
The problem lies not with framing the initial query to the capitainerie but with understanding the response, which may be more than just a berth number.

The capitainerie will want to know your boat's length, beam, draught and how many nights you wish to stay.

Not too difficult to master enough French to cope with that but I find things begin to fall apart when you get a response such as "You can go onto D17 for tonight but only for tonight because the regular berth holder returns tomorrow morning and you will have to move to G3 but only for one night because we have a regatta scheduled to arrive the following day etc. " :o
 
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A colleague, who has a French mother, was meeting up with his extended family in France. He said in French to his 90 odd year old Great Aunt give me a kiss. Unfortunately, the word for kiss in French is very similar to the French for f.ck. The room fell silent.

An English friend did the same for my wife at dinner table.
 
I think she might be more interested if you said "vielle".

And if you didn't insult her further by implying she already was old, instead of referring to the future: 'quand vous seriez vieille'!

I am sure you'll be a more appealing bet than me, but I find when I tell a woman she's an old man she doesn't come after me.
 
Our Français d'écolier on this thread explains very well why Sybarite suggests in post #2 that we should use English to speak to French marinas!
 
A colleague, who has a French mother, was meeting up with his extended family in France. He said in French to his 90 odd year old Great Aunt give me a kiss. Unfortunately, the word for kiss in French is very similar to the French for f.ck. The room fell silent.

A friend swears he was present when a group of visiting French dignitaries were greeted by his boss in slightly mangled french with the phrase "J'espere que vous sentirez tous un acceuil chaud" - I hope that you all will feel a warm welcome.
Unfortunately all present heard him say "J'espere que vous sentirez tous mon couille chaud", which means something slightly different.
 
Be aware that most French marinas don't even call themselves "marina". "Port de..." or something similar is much more common. (Despite that, googling "Nice marina" gives surprisingly specific results ;))

I imagine Googling for Naughty Marina would give even more interesting results
 
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