The first time I said the word
baiser, it was because I didn't know I should really have said
baisser. Baisser, said with an "ss" sound, means to lower. The same word said with a "z" means to have sex. Only more crudely. As I found out when C burst into laughter and delightedly pointed out my mistake.
(It just occurred to me that maybe this wasn't the first time I had mispronounced baisser. Oops.)
After this, my mind froze every time I wanted to say something about lowering, simultaneously trying to remember whether to use an s or a z while searching for a way to avoid using the word altogether.
So imagine my surprise when I saw "Un baiser de Genève" plastered on posters all over Geneva airport. The English version said "From Geneva with love"... and while "a fuck from Geneva" could be interpreted to mean the same thing, it didn't seem likely that this was really what the posters were saying.
Turns out baiser also means kiss.
It's a good thing I discovered this before last week, when Téo asked me what a baiser was.
A kiss! I replied, wondering exactly what he'd heard on the playground.
Only, as I realized a few days later, he didn't hear it on the playground. He heard it in class, in a Christmas carol they're singing.
So, phew that I had a choice of explanations. Because while in general I believe in explaining exactly what words mean, I'm not sure his teachers would have appreciated him saying that the carol was instructing everyone to have wet sex.
