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en français, Fifi!

leçons 15 à 21 - lessons 15 to 21

en français, Fifi! is a course in basic French for the submissive crossdresser. It is intended to give the student an understanding of the language sufficient to permit him to perform the functions of a maid or secretary without any need to resort to English. Putting a solid emphasis on grammar, this textbook for sissies teaches all the vocabulary that a feminized servant or subordinate should know, using exaggerated examples that will prove as memorable as they are provocative. The would-be speaker will find himself immersed in a world where men wear bras and chastity belts as they seek to please their female superiors with selfless submission, forever fearing shameful punishment.

en français, Fifi! features themes of lingerie discipline, male chastity and men as maids. It should go without saying that, like everything else at brassièred, it is intended for adults only.

leçon 15: les femmes obligent une bonne à nettoyer - women require a maid to clean

In the previous lesson, you learned how some types of -er verbs have two slightly different stems, depending on their subject, which affects how their forms are pronounced. There are other verbs where the stems change in order to maintain a similar pronunciation across all the conjugations, which we'll be considering in this lesson. If you're wondering why you might need to worry about such things, consider the possibility of writing lines - whether as a punishment, or merely to make sure you understand your place. « Je dois apprendre ma leçon ou je serai puni » à copier mille fois will soon correct you of any misapprehensions you might have about the importance of such matters!

qui nettoie la maison ? - who cleans the house?

If you could only learn one French verb, it had better be nettoyer (“to clean”). A maid who cannot clean is of no use to his mistress, which is why you need to know how to conjugate this correctly. Because nettoyer ends in -oyer, it falls into the fourth and final group of stem-changing verbs, with its “y” changing to an “i” in all but the nous and vous forms:

Some of those sentences shouldn't happen in a world where men serve as maids. After memorising how nettoyer is conjugated, rephrase them to reflect your domestic responsibilities and those of other sissies who serve their superiors. Should women have to trouble themselves with the housework? No, they most certainly should not!

It isn't just verbs that end in -oyer that are subject to this rule. Verbs that end in -ayer and -uyer also see their “y”s change to “i”s in all but the nous and vous forms, including the following:

In the case of -ayer verbs, the change is optional, so these are both correct:

Expecting anyone else to pay for the stockings you carelessly snag certainly isn't correct!

In which of the following would a “y” be acceptable?

qui commence à travailler ? - who starts to work?

In verbs that end in -cer, the “c” becomes a “ç” in the nous form, keeping the same soft “s” pronunciation as the others. For instance, with commencer (“to start”, “to begin”):

Other verbs that end in -cer include:

Bearing the following in mind, what sentences can you make with them? Remember:

qui mange un délice ? - who eats a tasty treat?

Similarly, with verbs that end in -ger, the “g” becomes “ge” in the nous form, again maintaining a soft “g” pronunciation. With manger (“to eat”):

Such a difference in diet! Tell your mistress what you prefer to eat as a sissy - chocolate or cum? There's only one answer, but you'll need to practise until the words trip off your tongue as easily as such treats should be to swallow!

The same pattern applies to the following verbs:

Consider the picture painted by the following three viewpoints:

What might busy businesswoman do if you didn't add the extra “e” when required, or omitted it when it was necessary? Use the other -ger verbs to develop the scene, making sure your mistress doesn't have any grounds to do the same to you by conjugating correctly!

exercices pour la quinzième leçon - exercises for the fifteenth lesson

Translate the following:

1. Il paye pour manger à l'hôtel

2. L'homme maladroit dérange sa femme

3. Les femmes d'affaires exigent des excuses du secrétaire

4. Elle effraie son mari avec la taille du soutien-gorge

5. Nous avertissons nos bonnes et ils corrigent leurs erreurs

Say the following in French:

1. The maid tries to wipe the floor while his mistress watches

2. She announces to her friends that her husband likes to wear panties

3. He pays for the expensive jewellery

4. We threaten, we force, he obeys

5. I love to eat my sperm

leçon 16: quelles corvées fais-tu, beau temps, mauvais temps ? - what chores do you do, rain or shine?

Even after mastering the intricacies of stem-changing verbs, there are still exceptions - irregular verbs that have a particular pattern of their own. One of the more commonly used is faire (“to do” or “to make”, depending on context), which is found in a variety of idioms, as well as to describe many of a maid's mundane duties. Just as in English, where doing the chores might mean doing the ironing, doing the vacuuming and doing the dishes, faire is the verb required to speak of the same in French. Which of the following are you expected to do for your mistress?

Nothing will be done while things stay “to do”, of course! To please your mistress, you need to put your promises into practice, something you'll only be able to speak of by correctly conjugating faire. As well as learning its various forms from the following examples, keep an eye out for idiomatic usage - expressions that can't be translated literally. Although it might seem odd to speak of “making the party” or “making the fat morning” in English, it's perfectly natural to do so in French - save that a maid is unlikely to be permitted such privileges, reserved as they are for the lady of the house!

c'est jour de lessive, quel temps fait-il ? - it's washing day, what's the weather like?

Faire is also used in various expressions that describe the weather.

One of these isn't like the others, even though the maid finds himself having to complete his chores all the same. Like faire, the verb pleuvoir (“to rain”) is irregular, but you don't have to worry as much about conjugating it, because it can only be used with il. You need merely memorise il pleut as a signal to dash outside and bring the washing in before the blouses and bras get too wet! You have been keeping an eye on the weather, haven't you?

faire mes corvées en tant que bonne - doing my chores as a maid

Don't spend too long looking out of the window - your chores won't do themselves, but your mistress will surely have words to say should she catch you staring at the clouds! You can't afford to be complacent even when you know all the forms of faire, because many of a maid's duties require different verbs to refer to them. Look at the endings of each of the following and figure out how they should be conjugated, checking those you are unsure of. Then acknowledge your responsibilities by constructing sentences that start with Je and J'adore. Be sure to end them with pour ma maîtresse! That's whom you're working for, and whom you must always seek to please!

Be sure to avoid the following, however!

Extend your duties to encompass even more with the following nouns:

Here's an example to get your started:

In French, even a single “toilet” is plural (les toilettes), like the panties you need to pull down to use one are in English. Remember that when you're next bent over the bowl, and consider all the other verbs you could use to describe humbly scrubbing the porcelain like a maid should for his mistress!

exercices pour la seizième leçon - exercises for the sixteenth lesson

Translate the following:

1. Je polis le miroir

2. Je dépoussière la table basse

3. Je passe l'aspirateur dans le salon

4. Je récure l'évier

5. Je fais la vaisselle

Say the following in French:

1. I do the housework, the laundry and the cooking

2. The secretary runs errands for his boss

3. Good maids do the dusting and then they do the vacuuming

4. When the submissive husband does the ironing, he wears a frilly apron

5. It is raining, but the man is hanging his wife's lingerie out to dry!

leçon 17: dans la cuisine - in the kitchen

Do you know how to make yourself useful in the kitchen? Whether you're making something delicious for your mistress or merely doing the dishes afterwards, it's important to know what everything's called. Of course, kitchens aren't just for cooking in, also containing all manner of appliances that a maid must know how to use. Then there's everything that needs to be cleaned - no small task when one considers all the nooks and crannies that must be made spotless, but your responsibility as a domestic servant all the same! You'd better get cracking and learn the necessary nouns, so you can speak of your chores, no matter what they might be.

les appareils de cuisine et meubles - kitchen appliances and furniture

Which of the following are you expected to use (utiliser, -er) in the course of your duties, and which do you clean? For each one, make a sentence where you say what you do and why (for example: pour sécher les beaux vêtements de ma maîtresse).

les ustensiles de cuisine et vaisselle - kitchen utensils and tableware

A sissy maid can have his work cut out for him simply taking care of all the cutlery and crockery. Learn the following nouns for next time you find yourself with your hands in the sink, or else are required to lay the table for dinner. Will you be eating with your mistress, or will you to be standing to one side, waiting to fill (remplir, -ir) her glass and take away (enlever, -e_er) plates as required?

If you wash one knife or fork, you most likely wash them all. After all, it's only a case of you doing the same thing again and again, saving your mistress the trouble no matter how long working your way through a huge pile of dirty plates might take. How would you tell your mistress's guests that you do all the washing up? If you've been paying appropriate attention to the examples, you'll have spotted that the French word for “all” takes various forms - tout, toute, tous and toutes. Which should you use if you don't want to show yourself up? As is often the case when there are four similar spellings of something, it depends on both the gender and the number of what's being spoken of.

Use your newfound knowledge to say that you wash everything else.

quand tu mets un soutien-gorge, tu deviens soumis - when you put on a bra, you become submissive

Another commonly used irregular verb is mettre, which literally means “to put”, but (like faire) is also found in various idioms. Fortunately, it is reasonable straightforward to conjugate, and learning how to do so allows you to use a variety of verbs that end in -mettre too. That includes the likes of soumettre (“to submit”), promettre (“to promise”) and admettre (“to admit”), all essential for a maid, as well as permettre (“to permit”), which is more the purview of your mistress. For now, however, let's consider mettre itself:

Study the following examples to see how that works with the other verbs:

If you want to speak of submitting to someone, rather than submitting something to someone, then it is necessary to use the reflexive form of soumettre, se soumettre being un petit plaisir which you will learn in due course! Will that be the only treat that you'll have to wait until lesson 24 to enjoy?

jour de lessive - laundry day

exercices pour la dix-septième leçon - exercises for the seventeenth lesson

Translate the following:

1. Je nettoie le four et la plaque de cuisson

2. Tous les verres à vin sont dans le lave-vaisselle

3. Il met le lave-linge en marche, puis essuie le plan de travail

4. Elle met sous clé tous les vêtements masculins de son mari

5. L'homme soumis met une gaine-combinaison noire et des bas couture

Say the following in French:

1. The knives, forks and spoons are on the table

2. The cups and saucers are in the cupboard

3. I hang all my wife's blouses out to dry

4. Her husband promises to put on his new stockings immediately

5. The maids scrub the dirty saucepans

leçon 18: elle a une bonne - she has a maid

Rivalling être (“to be”) in terms of how often it occurs, avoir (“to have”) is a verb that you cannot afford to be ignorant of. Not only is it used to indicate possession, but as an auxiliary verb, it also forms part of one of French's past tenses (just like “I have worn a bra” uses “have” in English). You'll learn how to say what you've worn in a later lesson, but to start with, let's see how this very useful verb is conjugated:

Avoir is irregular, so you can't rely on any rules, instead needing to memorise its various forms. Take care to pronounce them clearly, so as not to risk confusing elles ont (“they have”) and elles sont (“they are”) - it would not do to suggest that your mistress's friends are submissive husbands! Here are some more examples, illustrating how avoir often occurs in idioms:

Of particular note is avoir besoin de (literally “to have need of”, but more conveniently translated as “to need”). This may be used with a noun:

or the infinitive form of a verb, to express the need to do something:

il y a une femmelette effrayée ! - there is a scared sissy!

An especially useful expression involving avoir is il y a (“there is” or “there are”), which is best considered a phrase in itself rather than being broken down into its individual parts (it literally means “it there has”):

Note that il y a is never il y ont, no matter what follows it.

Where else might big, hairy spiders be waiting to scare a sissy? Let's hope for Fifi's sake they're not lurking in any of the following:

Using the above vocabulary, announce where your clothing is:

exercices pour la dix-huitième leçon - exercises for the eighteenth lesson

Translate the following:

1. J'ai beaucoup de culottes en dentelle

2. Il a honte d'étendre ses culottes

3. Il y a une écharpe sur le lit

4. Elle a besoin d'une meilleure bonne

5. Les femmes d'affaires ont un secrétaire qui porte une jupe et un chemisier

Say the following in French:

1. The sissy has a pretty pink pleated skirt

2. I am used to wearing women's underwear

3. My wife is right and I am wrong

4. There are plenty of push-up bras in the shop

5. Men are scared of tight corsets

leçon 19: qu'est-ce que tu as fait ? - what did you do?

So far, everything you have said has been in the present - as befits a maid who must concentrate on the moment, not letting your thoughts skip ahead of the task at hand or dwell on things you've done. For your mistress, however, what matters more is what you've finished - as satisfying as it might be for her to see you hard at work, your efforts count for nothing if you can't complete your chores. To tell your superior what you've done requires you to speak of things in the past, so in this lesson, we'll be looking at the most commonly used of the French past tenses, le passé composé (“the compound past”, which is also known as the “perfect” tense, from the Latin word for “completed”).

You may never given much thought to the variety of past tenses in English, but there are several ways of speaking of something that has happened, each capable of conveying a different meaning. Consider how “I wore a bra”, “I have worn a bra”, “I did wear a bra”, “I had worn a bra” and “I was wearing a bra” differ from one another in declaring your submission to such a garment. French offers a similar, but not identical range of past tenses, with the one you are about to learn capable of being translated as “I wore” or “I have worn” - not unlike how le présent de l'indicatif can mean either “I wear” or “I am wearing”. As we'll discuss in more detail in a later lesson, le passé composé describes actions that have been completed (“I put on my bra this morning”), actions that were repeated a number of times (“She spanked him three times that weekend”), and those that form part of a series (“The maid washed the laundry, scrubbed the floor, then did the ironing”).

To form le passé composé, you need two things - an auxiliary (a helping verb, the equivalent of “have” in English) and a past participle of the main verb (what “worn” is to “to wear”). For most verbs, the auxiliary is a present tense form of avoir, with the past participle being formed by modifying the stem. If that's too much grammar to take in at once, see if you can make sense of the following example:

Here, the auxiliary is ai (“have”), and the past participle nettoyé (“cleaned”). Although not always the case, in this example, the French and English correspond perfectly, so the sentence can be translated word for word, but it could also be read as “I cleaned the floor”.

The pattern continues exactly as you learned in the previous lesson:

Only the form of avoir changes, with the past participle staying the same throughout. For regular verbs, forming the latter is very straightforward.

With regular -er verbs, you remove the -er and add an “é”:

With regular -ir verbs, you remove the -ir and add an “i”:

With regular -re verbs, you remove the -re and add a “u”:

Of course, things aren't so easy with irregular verbs, where you have no choice but to learn the past participle along with their other forms. For faire (“to do”), the past participle is fait; for mettre (“to put”), the past participle is mis; for être (“to be”), the past participle is été; and for avoir (“to have”), the past participle is eu. See how these are used in the following examples:

Consider what you have done for your mistress recently, and assert the fact in French, but don't go getting a big head - it's only what's expected of you! Here are some more examples to help you become familiar with the past tense:

When speaking in the present tense, adverbs generally follow the verbs that they modify, but if you want to use such words to describe how something was done, you should put them between the auxiliary and the past participle:

Fifi achète de nouveaux bas et un nouveau soutien-gorge - Fifi buys new stockings and a new bra

Most verbs use avoir as their auxiliary, but a small number use être - reflexive verbs of the sort you've still got to look forward to in a later lesson, and intransitive (having no object) verbs of movement. For example:

Of course, whatever Fifi did inside the lingerie shop would most likely require him to use avoir as an auxiliary when subsequently reporting his actions, unless he were turning around (retourner, -er) or falling (tomber, -er). Things would get more complicated for the sissy maid, however, were he to want to speak about his mistress going shopping on his behalf - unlike those that use avoir, verbs that use être as an auxiliary require their past participles to agree with their subjects in terms of gender and number:

One can only hope it wasn't a very small lingerie shop, or it would have been quite crowded! Might Fifi have found sanctuary in the changing room? Practise your past tenses by putting yourself in his place and describe what happened. Don't forget to mention the panties, bras and stockings that you bought!

exercices pour la dix-neuvième leçon - exercises for the nineteenth lesson

Translate the following:

1. La bonne a blanchi les lavettes

2. La femmelette a timidement acheté un jupon soyeux

3. Tu as mis tes gants et nettoyé les toilettes

4. Il a rembourré son soutien-gorge avec de vieux bas

5. L'homme d'affaires a empaqueté beaucoup de gaines-culottes

Say the following in French:

1. The women removed their high heels

2. I succeeded in lacing my corset

3. He bought a new babydoll

4. His boss cruelly rejected his report

5. He correctly chooses to please his wife

leçon 20: qu'est-ce que tu n'as pas fait ? - what didn't you do?

Whether you've cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the bath or simply put on your uniform in advance of serving, you can now tell your mistress what you've done for her. But what if you've failed to fulfil her expectations of you as a maid, perhaps forgetting one of your chores or getting too caught up in another to complete everything you've been asked? Naturally, your first thoughts should be how you might make things right, with the apologies you learned in the first lesson needing to come to your lips if you're not to stand there in a shameful silence, but it would be better to be able to admit to your shortcomings too. In addition, there are many things a sissy maid shouldn't do, it likely to prove pleasing to your mistress's ear should you confirm that you haven't let her down by misbehaving! To do either, you need to know how to use negative adverbs.

In English, you would use a single word like “not” or “never”, but in formal French, the equivalents come in two parts, sandwiching the verb. For example:

The verb still needs to be conjugated according to its subject. However, if it starts with a vowel, then ne contracts to n', as in the following:

In the above examples, there's a second difference. If an indefinite article (un, une or des) follows the second part of the negative adverb, it becomes de (contracting to d' if the noun that follows starts with a vowel). The same is true for prepositions based on de, with du, de la, de l' and des becoming de too.

Where a second verb in the infinitive (“to”) form follows the first, such as when you're describing what you like to wear (J'aime porter), the two halves of the negative adverb sandwich only the first verb:

The same applies when a tense consists of more than one word:

As well as ne pas, there are other negative adverbs that work in a similar way:

The ne always precedes the verb, with the rest following afterwards. In the case of ne pas du tout and ne pas non plus, the du tout or non plus may be separated from the pas, just as you would in English. Let's see those negatives in action:

With ne que, the position of the que indicates how the verb is limited:

Two very different ways of making sure a misbehaving man learns his lesson! In both of them, however, it is what the submissive man wears that is restricted by ne que - his other activities are unaffected, save for how his chastity belt prevents him from touching his mistress's property. If you wanted to speak of him being limited still further, you would need to say something like:

Here, faire is the verb being limited, with the maid in question being employed solely to make sure the porcelain is properly polished. Can you imagine yourself in a similar position, perhaps wearing only a chastity belt as you make sure all those seats are suitable for your mistress to sit on?

Of particular usefulness to a maid is ne pas encore (“not yet”), which can be combined with the past tense in a manner most appropriate for answering your mistress - in so far as any answer in the negative is appropriate for the chores you're supposed to have completed:

You haven't, but you will, because that's what being a maid is all about.

In informal French, ça is often used in place of cela for “that”, but it is better that you avoid this contraction when answering your superiors.

exercices pour la vingtième leçon - exercises for the twentieth lesson

Translate the following:

1. Les femmes ne portent rien

2. Le secrétaire n'enlève pas ses talons hauts quand il travaille

3. Il n'a pas empaqueté assez de culottes

4. Elles ne font plus le repassage

5. Elle n'utilise pas toujours sa brosse à cheveux pour ses cheveux

Say the following in French:

1. He never harasses waitresses

2. I wear only my own panties

3. No, Ma'am, I haven't cleared the table yet

4. She doesn't like to punish her husband

5. He didn't hear his mistress's bell

leçon 21: je nettoyais - I was cleaning

The past tense we have been considering so far, le passé composé is suitable for describing actions that were completed, such as individual chores, those that occurred a specific number of times, such as punishments, or those that formed part of a series (perhaps a chore, then a punishment, then more chores!). In English, however, there are things that you cannot say using only combinations of “have” and past participles - “I was scrubbing the toilet when my mistress entered the bathroom”, for example - and the same is true for French. In order to express something that was happening when something else happened, it's necessary to know another tense - l'imparfait (the “imperfect”).

You should recognise the start of frotter (“to scrub”), despite the unfamiliar ending. Just as every verb has a set of conjugations for its present tense, it also has a second, albeit different, set for its imperfect tense. We shall look at how to construct these shortly, but for now, it's enough to note that -ais is the appropriate ending for the je form of an -er verb.

The imperfect tense is also used to describe actions of unspecified duration:

to describe repeated or habitual actions:

and to provide emotional or physical descriptions:

It is also used in conditional clauses, which we will look at in a later lesson. The difference between le passé composé and l'imparfait can be considered similar to that between “I have cleaned” and “I was cleaning” in English. In the former, the action is clearly finished, but in the latter, it may have been interrupted (“I was cleaning the kitchen when the phone rang”), or merely ongoing (“I was cleaning my mistress's house every Friday evening”).

Regardless of whether a verb is regular or irregular, its imperfect form is constructed by taking the nous form of the present tense, removing the -ons, and adding a new ending that depends on the subject. For je and tu, that's -ais; for il and elle, that's -ait; for nous, it's -ions; for vous, it's -iez; and lastly, for ils and elles, it's -aient. Let's see how that works with our old favourite, porter (“to wear”). Here, the nous form of the present tense is portons, so the stem for the imperfect is port-:

Unlike the present tense, where you needed to learn separate rules for -er, -ir and -re verbs, the same approach works for all three groups. Let's see that in action with finir (“to finish”), where the nous form of the present tense is finissons, so the stem for the imperfect is finiss-:

Note how the imperfect is also used for the man facing the wall, as this action also lacks a specific end. Perhaps the man in question was expected to show his submission all evening, or perhaps he is even now in the same humiliating position - because the sentence gives no indication, the imperfect is used.

There are two minor exceptions to these otherwise simple rules. Firstly, verbs that change their spelling to maintain pronunciation (those ending in -cer or -ger) are subject to the same changes when conjugating their imperfect forms. Secondly, because the nous form of être (“to be”) does not end in -ons, this verb uses the irregular stem êt-, albeit with the same set of endings as before:

Here are some more examples to help you get a feel for the imperfect:

exercices pour la vingt et unième leçon - exercises for the twenty first lesson

Translate the following:

1. Il essuyait le plan de travail avec une lavette sale

2. Le secrétaire endommageait le plancher avec ses talons aiguilles

3. Elle corrigeait la prononciation de son mari pendant qu'il faisait face au mur

4. Les hommes rougissaient pendant que leurs femmes achetaient des nuisettes coquines

5. Tu travaillais comme homme d'affaires, mais maintenant tu es mon secrétaire

Say the following in French:

1. I was wearing a pretty apron

2. He wasn't polishing the spoons

3. They were looking at the secretary's new blouse

4. She was choosing a pair of panties for her husband

5. The maids were taking off their dresses while their mistresses watched