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<\/p>\nTalking on the phone is an art.<\/p>\n
Whether it be to\u00a0help you do your job or to easily socialize with your cool new French friends, having a natural, smooth-flowing phone conversation will require thinking quickly on your feet.<\/p>\n
So in this post, we’re going to help you remain cool, calm and collected while having French phone conversations. We’ve included key vocabulary and phrases and example phone dialogues, so you’ll have all you need to perfect this important skill.<\/p>\n
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Casual:<\/strong><\/p>\n Easy peasy, and almost exactly like the English, with a cute\u00a0little hat on the “o.”<\/a><\/p>\n Formal:<\/strong><\/p>\n In more formal environments like the business world, for example, answering the phone requires taking it up a notch. If you call the bank or Internet service provider, you’re likely to hear something like “Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale, bonjour”\u00a0<\/em>(Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9ral, hello)\u00a0or “Bouygues Telecom, bonjour”<\/em> (Bouygues Telecom, hello).<\/p>\n In an ideal world, we’d reach the person we’d like to speak to immediately. More often, though, you have to pass through an intermediary. In casual conversations, this may mean talking to a parent, sibling or partner. In more formal contexts, you’ll often\u00a0have to go through a secretary.<\/p>\n Casual:<\/strong><\/p>\n Formal:<\/strong><\/p>\n Asking who is on the line in the age of caller ID may seem like a thing of the past, but you know how it goes. People forget to save numbers, phones get lost, phones break and numbers change. C’est la vie <\/em>(That’s life).<\/p>\n Regardless of how well you may or may not know a person, if their identity is temporarily unknown, it’s best to be polite (dare I say formal) rather than\u00a0grunting a (very) casual “C’est qui ?”<\/em> (Who is it?). Here are two alternatives:<\/p>\n Un appareil<\/em> is French for\u00a0a device, and in the contexts of phone conversations, it refers to the phone.<\/p>\n More broadly speaking, the expression “de la part de”\u00a0<\/em>means “on behalf of.”<\/p>\n They say that patience is a virtue. I believe this to be especially true when you’re forced to listen to hold music (which I’ve been led to believe is the same all over the world, thanks to extensive personal research).<\/p>\n Casual:<\/strong><\/p>\n Formal:<\/strong><\/p>\n Note that veuillez<\/em> is the second person plural imperative form of vouloir<\/em> (to want).<\/p>\n Can you hear me now? Unfortunately, dropped calls and spotty reception are things cell phone users know all too well. Let’s take a look at how to handle such inconveniences in French.<\/p>\n Casual:<\/strong><\/p>\n C<\/em>apter<\/em> is a verb with several meanings. In addition to “to receive a signal,” as in the case of a phone’s reception, it can also mean “to attract attention,” “to tap” a resource such as water, or in more informal contexts capter <\/em>can also mean “to understand” or “to grasp.”<\/p>\n \u00c7a, <\/em>a contraction of cela, <\/em>meaning\u00a0“this” or “that,”\u00a0is an indefinite\u00a0demonstrative pronoun.\u00a0<\/em>Here, \u00e7a<\/em> refers to\u00a0“this connection.”<\/p>\n Formal:<\/strong><\/p>\n Use the above\u00a0line instead of screaming “Quoi ?”<\/em> (What?) at your\u00a0interlocutor.<\/p>\n Casual:<\/strong><\/p>\n In French,\u00a0salut <\/em>can also work as\u00a0the casual\u00a0greeting of “hi” or “hey” instead of bonjour <\/em>(hello, good morning).<\/p>\n In French, allez <\/em>is often used as an expression of finality, which makes it a bit difficult to translate into English but it roughly translates to “alright” or “alrighty” in the above instance.<\/p>\n Formal:<\/strong><\/p>\n Before we get into the sample dialogues, here’s a fun clip from our YouTube channel<\/a> discussing what the French are like in phone calls:<\/p>\n You can find more subtitled videos like these on the FluentU program. FluentU<\/strong> takes authentic videos\u2014like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks\u2014and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.<\/p>\r\n <\/p> \r\n You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Check out the website or download the iOS app<\/a> or Android app.<\/a><\/p>\r\n\n
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\n<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nGetting Connected to the Right Person<\/h3>\n
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Asking Who’s on the Line<\/h3>\n
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Holding During a French Phone Call<\/h3>\n
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Technical Difficulties on French Phone Calls<\/h3>\n
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Ending a French Phone Conversation<\/h3>\n
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French Phone Vocabulary<\/h2>\n
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Sample French Phone Conversations<\/h2>\n
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