tete-a-tete?

[light]

Hello,

what's the word for a romantic dinner with your lover (only 2 of you)?

We had a ..............dinner last night.

btw: is this french expression common?

 

[Anglika]

romantic! There really isn't a better word.

Yes, tete-a-tete is common, but I would not use it to describe a romantic dinner.


We dined tete-a-tete = we dined with just the two of us together, no one else there - but it could just be a friendly meeting, nothing romantic about it.

 

[champagne]

Hello,

what's the word for a romantic dinner with your lover (only 2 of you)?

We had a "tête-à-tête" dinner last night.

btw: is this french expression common?

We had a tête-à-tête dinner last night.

 

[champagne]

We had a tête-à-tête dinner last night.

 

[CHOMAT]

Don't forget the little hats on the head : tête-à-tête, hyphenate the words.

 

[light]

thanks a lot.. how do you pronounce it ? /teyıteıt/ ? ( if only I could find those little hats on my keyboard

 

[CHOMAT]

True! in English, there is a diphthong in tête ->[ei], not in French
[teit schwa teit]

 

[fromatto]

Hello,

what's the word for a romantic dinner with your lover (only 2 of you)?

We had a ..............dinner last night.

btw: is this french expression common?

Candlelit. We had a candlelit dinner last night.

The expression is very common, but it may carry both positive and negative connotations. I had a tête-à-tête with my boss today might mean that I had an argument.

 

[light]

I want to focus on being only 2 of us, not with a third person...

 

[fromatto]

I want to focus on being only 2 of us, not with a third person...

You can say 'we had a romantic candlelit dinner'.

 

[BobK]

True! in English, there is a diphthong in tête ->[ei], not in French
[teit schwa teit]

In some English, that is ;-) - but quite a few native English speakers - often the ones who did French at school (and French is one of the more common second languages at school) - use /e/ (still the English sound, but less insistently English.

b

 

[CHOMAT]

Sorry Bob! I did not get your paratactic message: Is it that tête is more commonly pronounced [e] and barely pronounced [ei] or is it a midway phoneme?
My Jones must be outdated now for [ei] is the only received phoneme for tête-à-tête. Essentially,there are distortions between dictionaries and the ever-changing phonological flow ( or lexical..)
Appreciate your answer ! pas de prise de tête yet.

 

[riverkid]

Chomat,

If you so desire, you can hear two different NaE pronunciations here,

tete a tete - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

 

[CHOMAT]

It settles things! I've also found out that the stress is placed upon the second tête .

 

[BobK]

Sorry Bob! I did not get your paratactic message: Is it that tête is more commonly pronounced [e] and barely pronounced [ei] or is it a midway phoneme?
My Jones must be outdated now for [ei] is the only received phoneme for tête-à-tête. ...

It's not a midway phoneme; some speakers do say [ei]. But quite a few don't. The Merriam-Webster link (thanks RK) is pretty close to the Br English variants I know - although we let the second syllable slip into a schwa.

;-)

b