Ha. I learned the french word for condom in high school, probably 9th or 11th grade, when Monsieur Drummond told us a very lovely story. Allow me to paraphrase:A nun was out at breakfast at a cafe in France. Her French was (I'm guessing) somewhat limited. She wanted some jam for her toast, but did not know the French word. When the server approached, she tried "Pardonnez-moi monsieur, je voudrais un bol du 'jam' pour mon pain grille, s'il vous plait." The server did not understand. She tried again "Du...jelly?" (I don't actually remember the first two words she tried but let's just roll with it). Suddenly, she thought that maybe the word would be similar to preserves in English. Finally she declared. "Je voudrais un bol de[s] preservatif[s]." She had asked for a bowl of condoms. The server turned red and scampered off to find an English-speaking coworker to explain her error. She was very embarrassed.
The same week, he made the mistake of teaching us how to ask for a mint "Avez-vous une menthe?" Combining this with our new vocabulary word, un preservatif, we declared that we had finally learned a useful phrase in French.
Also, the fact that AIDS is a straight-up vocabulary word is a little bit frightening. Though I suppose if someone were telling you they had it, it would probably be useful.
Let's hope I don't get tricked into a green card marriage whilst in France. Ha ha. Ha.
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