In France, it is perfectly acceptable to sit outside a café at four o’clock in the afternoon and order nothing but a Coke. Granted, this Coke-drinking is generally accompanied by smoking perhaps one, but often three, cigarettes – depending on the amount of time one sits – which can be quite a long time.
For some reason, in America it is not socially acceptable to simply sit and drink a Coke at four o’clock in the afternoon. Now, if you are drinking a latte, or even a beer, that’s ok, but just a Coke? Or – God forbid – an Orangina? Cokes and Orangina’s are the types of beverages that Americans drink while shopping, driving, or walking to our various destinations. We see no need to sit down to drink them.
But every time I take a walk with a French friend, our little promenade inevitably ends in the question, “Tu veux boire un verre?” This means, in a slightly loose translation, “Do you want to have a drink?” When uttered in English, this lovely little phrase almost always means, “Would you like to drink an alcoholic beverage with me?”
This question is sometimes asked in the context of ‘Happy Hour,’ a most curious ritual in which uptight urban professionals drink beers on the cheap after work while continuing to discuss their jobs and their co-workers.
Or this question can be a casual way to ask someone on a date if you haven’t quite plucked up the courage to ask him or her to dinner. If you just “have a drink” with your crush, you can always deny your romantic intentions later in case of rejection.
Finally “having a drink” can be used when you are awkwardly meeting someone for the first time- like your brother’s roommate’s mother’s friend’s son who happens to be living in the same city as you at the moment. (Yes, this did actually happen to me once, and fortunately, I can report it was much less bizarre than it sounds.)
Alternatively there is the question, “Do you want to get coffee with me?”
This question can be used to facilitate a meeting about professional relationships, i.e. “Let’s have coffee and discuss the possibility of you interning with us this summer.”
“Getting coffee” can be a pretext for seeing friends with whom you’ve fallen out of touch, i.e. “I know we haven’t seen each other since I stole your boyfriend, but let’s “get coffee” and try to patch things up.”
And of course “getting coffee,” “like “having a drink” can also be used for pseudo-dates: “Hey, I really enjoyed meeting you the other night at that art opening. Let’s have coffee to…uh…discuss the works further…”
If I am hanging out with my sister or a close friend and we get a hankerin’ for some caffeine, we will simply walk into a coffee shop, order our coffee (or Coke or whatever) in a nice “to-go” cup and continue on our way. We would not waste our time sitting down to drink this beverage unless we had some sort of “business” to conduct.
The point of all this is to show that American’s aren’t in the habit of just chilling out with their beverages. We always have some reason for sitting down to quench our thirst. What’s more: the beverage with which we sit cannot be just any beverage, but must be a) alcoholic or b) expensive, frothy, and caffeinated.
But “Tu veux boire un verre?” means something very different than “Do you want to have a drink?” or “Do you want to get coffee with me?” (Which can both be loaded questions.)
“Tu veux boire un verre?” just means: “Do you want to sit outside this café with me, at four o’clock in the afternoon and sip on a Coke while we talk about nothing and watch the people walking by? Heck, we don’t even have to talk. We can just sit there enjoying our Cokes if you want. For as long as we please.”
“Oh, and by the way, it’s ok that you stole my boyfriend. I was getting tired of his snoring.”
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