How to Introduce and Greet someone in French

Always address adults whom you don’t know well using the formal form of the verb, and reserve the informal for friends and children. It is interesting to note that Americans have a tendency to be informal in many situations in which the French prefer to interact formally. We’ve indicated below whenever a given sentence is formal or informal.

You will discover that although the subject pronoun for “we” is nous, the pronoun on frequently is used instead. You can usually tell by the context whether the speaker using on is referring to someone in general, or to the first-personal plural form “we.”

You also will note that another difference between French and English is that nouns in French are either masculine or feminine. This has nothing to do with actual gender—say, the inherent masculine nature of le stylo (the pen), so it’s better to memorize the gender of a noun rather than try to figure out this system of classification! Another important aspect to remember about the gender of nouns in French is that articles, adjectives, pronouns, and some verbs must agree with nouns in gender and number. We have indicated this below where appropriate by providing both the masculine and feminine forms, with the feminine form indicated either with an “e” in parentheses or given in a separate example. Note that when choosing sentences to describe yourself, you’ll want to choose the appropriate form.

Greetings : 1