Language Unbleached: Talking Dirty

You're Screwed, or So You Hope!

Sex: We literally need it to survive! Much of what we do from puberty onward is meant to attract mates. As Dave Chappelle put it:
Now, there are more nuances than that, but the core fact is true. We, men and women, have various standards that make us seek out various mates. And, as the majority of the Earth's population seeks long-term monogamy, one thing proves to be quite important -- communication! Or, as my sainted mother says:
"You can sleep with them; but, eventually, you'll have to talk to them."
In my experience, even to sleep with them, you have to talk to them. People crave stimulation, and they prefer it from proficient tongues. Thus, for anyone who lives where their native language is not the lingua franca, foreign-language skills can help you do more than survive and make friends. They can help you find lovers, partners, and even spouses.

Now, flirtation, loving communication, and "the dynamics of human peer bonding" have dimensions that (a) are less related to languages and linguistics, and that (b) my own romantic life disqualifies me from discussing. That said, you'll have to adapt what knowledge I have to your own methods.

Why should it matter what language I use?

To answer this, I'll turn to the SLA expert and an intellectual frenemy, Stephen Krashen. In his book, Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, he describes the "affective filter hypothesis," which states that negative emotions impede language acquisition. Now, the only thing that I like about this hypothesis is the term. The rest is unoriginal. Psychologists have long known that negative emotions (like fear) impede our comprehension of things. This is true for language, even if you're a native speaker.

But, fear is not the only affective filter. For instance, I hate being patronized for being foreign, and natives' simplifying their speech prematurely angers me even more. My anger, in turn, impedes comprehension of their speech. That impeded comprehension gives foreign speakers a false cue that further simplification is needed, and so a vicious cycle forms.

Sometimes I regret ever learning
the term micro-aggression.
Some expats whom I know, however, have no problem with this. They are happy to let their girlfriends order their meals for them at restaurants. They don't mind empty compliments about their language skills after they say six whole words in a foreign language. Instead, their affective filters are things like disgust with the foreign language, or feelings of pressure to respond perfectly. There is a wide range of such emotional triggers.

Filters aside, though, there is one more key reason to speak your target's language as well as you can. Foreign languages tax most people's energy. Because most non-natives learned your language in school, if at all, making them speak your language is like pushing them back into those dreaded years of vocab quizzes and grammar drills. How sexy can your target feel if he or she is pressured to recall irregular verb conjugations or determiner-noun agreement rules? As a rule, the seller speaks the buyer's language; so, if you're the horny one, bear that burden! Sooner or later, your naughty bits will thank you for it.

What should I learn to say, then?

Unfortunately, there's no useful pickup-line phrasebook or sex translation guide, because rehearsed flirtations are practically doomed to fail. Why? Because books like that don't know you. The sexiest parts of you can't be recited. They have to reflect and reveal what makes you such a catch. Instead, it's better to think of how you want to speak instead of what you want to say.

For instance, if you want to convey sexual undertones, you have to master a language's figurative sexual language. However, your sex and sexual orientation influence how much access you get to it. Men usually talk more openly about sex, and they're more willing to describe their desires, exploits, and so forth with vulgarity and double entendres. That means, then, that gay men and straight women often receive these terms more openly in the wild. Straight men, on the other hand, will likely need a cohort of single straight men to learn this piece of a language. That, in itself, offers an answer.

To answer the above question, answer this one: "Where do horny men go?"

Survey says…

Porn Sites

Most men enjoy sexual congress; and, if they're not having it, they're taking matters into their own hands, going online to watch videos of other people having it. About ten percent of all search engine searches are for pornographic content, and porn mainly serves male masturbators.

The challenge lies not in finding porn as much as finding porn in your target language. That may be much harder if mostly conservative people speak your target language (e.g., Arabic). Also, if the Internet is not very present where most of your target language's native speakers live, the Internet may be a dead end. For most language learners, though, entering terms for sexual anatomy into a video search engine will quickly yield results.

"Did somebody order a pizza? Extra sausage?"
Any serious language learner should watch at least one complete pornographic video in his target language, but as if it were a normal film. Short of your sexual orientation, you don't need to pick a film based on your sexual preferences. You just want to learn the main terms used in sexual dialogue. The video, therefore, only needs to be appealing enough to keep your attention.

As you watch your porno with your hands off your junk, pay attention to commonly repeated phrases (there are a lot in pornography), and their tones of voice. Again, focus on how they talk, not on understanding every sentence. Then, at the end, see if you learned some key terms: tits, cock, balls, mouth, pussy, ass, cum (n.), cum (vi.), hard, wet, interjections for sexual arousal or encouragement, and pizza.

Comments Sections for Online Attention Whores

Thanks to sites like Instagram and YouTube, men can now receive regular media feeds of whomever attracts them sexually. The linguistic pay dirt of these sites, though, is in their comments sections. Here, men often post comments describing their reactions to said photos. Some even narrate whole sexual fantasies. Subscribe to a few feeds with high comment rates in your target language, and you'll be laughing your way to talking dirty.

However, these two sources have a limit. They only provide input. There's little to no feedback in what language you produce. For that, you need open sexual language exchange from human interlocutors. Luckily, there is a quick source for that, too.

Sex Solicitations

To be clear, I am not recommending that you hire prostitutes or escorts. If you're going to do that, the only sentence you will need is, "How much?" Instead, you just want to "catfish" sex solicitors. However, please do this cautiously, as prodding this underbelly of society could have real consequences if you don't use basic Internet "street smarts":
  • "Solicit" them with dummy profiles,
  • Never state that you want to purchase sex.
  • Never click their links,
  • Don't share your personal contact information, and
  • Never accept invitations or friend requests.
That is enough to avoid most trouble while you use them to refine your dirty talk. If you can find human sex solicitors, not automated programs, most will engage you for about ten messages before they catch on. At that point, some will start to insult you, and then you can practice your shit-talkingRemember that all exchanges, even the ugly ones, are opportunities to build your language skills.

I could go on, but this list need not cover everything. It just needs to guide you to some general sexual language sources outside of the barroom and bedroom. What's important to them is that you reach beyond your comfort zone in a comfortable setting. Propositioning a stranger, or even a third date, can be stressful. And, yes, it's that much harder to do it in a foreign language. But, nothing gives you charisma like confidence, and nothing gives you confidence like preparation. So, be prepared, stay relaxed, and always use protection!

This message was not brought to you by Charisma Man.


  1. Your language acquisition knowledge is laudable, but your projection of a foreign culture's diversity in the language mechanisms of mate selection as being accessible through porn is simply wrong. Porn production is male dominated and, I would suggest, statistically populated by males with less than average mate acquisition skills.

  2. Hey, Dude. I wanted to unpack a bit of what you just said before I responded, specifically this segment:

    // Your projection of a foreign culture's diversity in the language mechanisms of mate selection as being accessible through porn is simply wrong.

    I'm thinking that you mean that I somehow claim that porn provides the tools for attracting mates across cultures, but that's not what I would target with recommending porn for acquiring language to assist with attracting mates.

    To remedy that misunderstanding, I'll just cite my article:


    The point is not to say that watching porn and learning how to say, "Suck my dick," in Xhosa or Korean will make native speakers want to do so. However, such statements are valuable to sexual congress (since attraction has hopefully been established by then) and to some more assertive "flirtation types." These communication goals, and thus the language needed to achieve them, have their merits, and they are sorely overlooked in institutional language instruction. That's the point of this article, broadly speaking.

    Speaking more narrowly, pornography provides the lexicon for meeting those aforementioned goals, so it's reasonable to use it as an aid in reaching them.