Greetings in French: bonjour, salut and more
The greetings in French are bonjour (hello, good morning), salut (hi, and bye), bonsoir (good evening), bonne nuit (good night), ça va ? (how's it going?) and, for goodbye, au revoir, à bientôt (see you soon) and à plus (see you). Bonjour is the safe one with anyone, salut the friendly one, and in French film and television dialogue the two are almost exactly level: salut comes out 1.02 times as often as bonjour. Most French greetings are more than one word, so for this page we counted the whole phrases in the French subtitles. Below are the French greetings with how to say them and when, the counts, and what changes in Quebec, Switzerland and the south of France.
The greetings in French
| Greeting | Say it | Meaning | Use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonjour | bon-ZHOOR | hello; good morning | with anyone, during the day |
| Salut | sa-LU | hi; bye | with friends, family, people you call tu |
| Bonsoir | bon-SWAHR | good evening | in the evening, arriving or leaving |
| Bonne nuit | bun NWEE | good night | when someone is going to bed |
| Coucou | koo-KOO | hi there | very familiar: family, close friends, children |
| Ça va ? | sa VA | how's it going? | the everyday question, and its answer |
| Comment allez-vous ? | ko-mon ta-lay VOO | how are you? | to someone you call vous |
| Comment vas-tu ? | ko-mon va TU | how are you? | to someone you call tu |
| Enchanté / enchantée | on-shon-TAY | pleased to meet you | -é if you are a man, -ée if a woman |
| Bienvenue | byan-vuh-NU | welcome | to anyone |
| Allô ? | ah-LOH | hello? | answering the phone |
| Au revoir | oh ruh-VWAHR | goodbye | the standard goodbye |
| À bientôt | ah byan-TOH | see you soon | a warm goodbye |
| À plus (tard) | ah PLUSS (TAR) | see you (later) | casual |
| À demain | ah duh-MAN | see you tomorrow | when you will meet tomorrow |
| Bonne journée | bun zhoor-NAY | have a good day | as you leave, during the day |
The s of à plus is pronounced, which is how you tell it from plus meaning "no more".
Bonjour or salut?
French divides its greetings by how well you know someone, along the same line as tu and vous.
- Bonjour is the neutral greeting and never wrong: with a stranger, a shopkeeper, a colleague or a teacher. In the evening it becomes bonsoir.
- Salut is for people you would call tu. It works for hello and for goodbye, and Le Robert's dictionary labels it familier, familiar.
- Coucou is warmer still, the "hi there" of family and close friends. It is the call of the cuckoo, and also what French children say for peekaboo.
The same split runs through "how are you?". Comment allez-vous ? goes with vous, comment vas-tu ? with tu, and ça va ?, the one you will hear most, works with almost anyone you are on easy terms with. Which "you" to use with whom is counted in formal and informal you.
Ça va? Ça va.
Ça va is both the question and the answer. Ça va ? (how's it going?) is answered with ça va (fine), or ça va bien, très bien, pas mal. The whole exchange can be four words long: Salut, ça va ? — Ça va, et toi ?
It does a third job too. Ça va aller means "it's going to be all right", and French films say it 28,629 times, as often as comment ça va ? itself. Those are not greetings, so the table leaves them out.
Which French greetings do films say most?
Single-word lists, like the one behind hello and goodbye, ranked, cannot count au revoir, ça va or à bientôt. So we read the whole French release of OpenSubtitles 2018, 106,831,606 lines of film and television subtitles, counted every greeting as a phrase, and removed repeated uploads of the same film.
| # | Greeting | Meaning | Times said | For every 1,000 bonjour | Counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | salut | hi; bye (informal) | 215,515 | 1021.5 | only opening a sentence: not “le salut” (salvation) |
| 2 | bonjour | hello; good morning | 210,987 | 1000.0 | |
| 3 | ça va ? | how's it going? / fine | 158,293 | 750.3 | at the end of a sentence: the question and its answer; not inside comment ça va |
| 4 | au revoir | goodbye | 82,681 | 391.9 | |
| 5 | allô | hello? (on the phone) | 51,150 | 242.4 | with and without the accent |
| 6 | bonsoir | good evening | 48,354 | 229.2 | |
| 7 | bienvenue | welcome | 40,064 | 189.9 | only opening a sentence: not “souhaiter la bienvenue” |
| 8 | bonne nuit | good night | 38,643 | 183.2 | only on its own |
| 9 | comment ça va ? | how are you? | 28,407 | 134.6 | |
| 10 | enchanté / enchantée | pleased to meet you | 22,122 | 104.9 | both forms, only opening a sentence; still includes some “delighted” |
| 11 | à plus (tard) | see you (later) | 16,887 | 80.0 | only before the end of a sentence or tard: not “à plus de” (at more than) |
| 12 | adieu | farewell (for good) | 16,721 | 79.3 | not “d'adieu”, “un adieu” (the noun farewell) |
| 13 | quoi de neuf ? | what's new? | 16,369 | 77.6 | |
| 14 | comment allez-vous ? | how are you? (vous) | 14,975 | 71.0 | |
| 15 | comment vas-tu ? | how are you? (tu) | 12,032 | 57.0 | |
| 16 | bonne journée | have a good day | 7,741 | 36.7 | only on its own |
| 17 | coucou | hi there (very familiar) | 6,153 | 29.2 | only opening a sentence: not “un petit coucou”, “le coucou” (cuckoo) |
| 18 | à bientôt | see you soon | 5,325 | 25.2 | only opening a sentence |
| 19 | à demain | see you tomorrow | 4,762 | 22.6 | only opening a sentence: not “jusqu'à demain” |
| 20 | ciao / tchao | bye (informal) | 3,944 | 18.7 | both spellings |
| 21 | bonne soirée | have a good evening | 3,402 | 16.1 | only on its own |
| 22 | à tout à l'heure | see you later (today) | 2,689 | 12.7 | only opening a sentence |
| 23 | à la prochaine | until next time | 1,632 | 7.7 | only opening a sentence |
What the counts show:
- Salut and bonjour are level. Salut is 1.02 times bonjour, and part of its count is goodbyes, so as a hello bonjour is at least its equal. The single-word count found the same.
- Hello beats goodbye. Bonjour is said 2.6 times as often as au revoir, and au revoir 4.9 times as often as the final adieu.
- À plus is the casual see-you. It is said 3.2 times as often as à bientôt.
- Vous wins on screen, unlike Spanish. Comment allez-vous ? is said 1.24 times as often as comment vas-tu ?, where Spanish greetings prefer the familiar ¿cómo estás? by more than two to one. In French the familiar question is mostly ça va ? instead.
- Bonsoir beats bonne nuit, by 1.25 to one. French has its own word for the evening hello, where Spanish buenas noches does the work of both.
Some phrases are only greetings in certain positions, so the last column says what was counted. Salut is also "salvation" (le salut), bienvenue also "a welcome" (souhaiter la bienvenue), à demain also "until tomorrow" (jusqu'à demain): those are counted only where they open a sentence. À plus is counted only before the end of a sentence or tard, because à plus de is "at more than".
Bonjour for goodbye, adieu for hello
French is spoken on several continents, and a few greetings change their job on the way. Wiktionary records these:
- In Quebec and the rest of French-speaking North America, bonjour is also a goodbye, said as you leave, and allô is not only for the phone but an ordinary in-person "hi".
- In the south of France, adieu can be a hello, and in Switzerland it is used for both hello and goodbye. Elsewhere it is the farewell for ever.
- Tchao is the French spelling of Italian ciao, the one the 1990 spelling reform recommends. Both are in the table together.
Answering a greeting
- Bonjour, monsieur. — Hello, sir. (Bonjour, madame to a woman.)
- Salut, ça va ? — Hi, how's it going?
- Ça va bien, merci, et toi ? — Fine, thanks, and you?
- Enchanté. — Pleased to meet you. Moi de même. — Likewise.
- Bonne journée ! — Have a good day!
- À demain ! — See you tomorrow!
Merci, which follows most of these, is counted against other languages in which language says thank you most.
Learn them in a sentence
Greetings open the free French course, Verbavia (our own course), with a recording of each, and bonjour and salut are both in the course's French word list. French slang beyond the greetings, mec, truc, ouais, is counted in French slang you will actually hear. More beginner sets: colours in French, numbers 1 to 100 in French, family members in French, the days of the week and the months of the year. The season's own wishes have pages of their own: Merry Christmas in French and Happy New Year in French.
The same count in other languages: Spanish greetings, Chinese greetings and greetings in Italian.
Sources
- The counts are from the OPUS release of OpenSubtitles 2018, French (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org; the file is fr.txt.gz). It was read once, line by line. Each phrase was matched as whole words, with an apostrophe or a hyphen splitting words, and a line holding a greeting was counted only the first time it appeared with the two lines before and after it, which removes duplicate uploads. France, Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec are mixed in one release with no country label, and many subtitles are translations. The method and every rule are in
scripts/frequency_greetings_fr.py, and the counts are committed inresearch/greetings-fr-counts/and printed from there rather than typed. - Wiktionary: bonjour, salut, coucou, allô, adieu, tchao, enchanté, à plus and à tout à l'heure, for the meanings and regional uses.
- Le Robert, Dictionnaire en ligne: salut, for the label familier.