Dr Suzanne Kobeisse
Every beginner wants a list. Something manageable. A handful of phrases they can carry into a trip or a conversation and feel prepared. I understand that. But most of the lists I see online get it slightly wrong, because they treat these phrases as vocabulary to memorise rather than as social tools with real cultural meaning behind them.
So here are five phrases I genuinely teach in my first sessions with complete beginners. Not because they are the most common French words statistically, but because they are the ones that will most determine whether a French person responds to you with warmth or with that particular brand of Gallic disengagement that tourists sometimes mistake for rudeness.
1. Bonjour (hello / good day)
You know this one already. Everyone does. But most beginners do not know how to use it correctly, and that gap matters enormously in France.
Bonjour is not just a greeting. In French social life, it is an acknowledgement of another person's existence. You say it when you enter a shop. You say it to a waiter before you say anything else. You say it to someone at a market stall before you ask the price of anything. You say it to your neighbour in a lift, to the doctor's receptionist before you give your name, to the barman before you order.
Skipping it is not neutral. It reads as rude. Not dramatically rude, but socially off: the equivalent of barging to the front of a queue. When French people seem cold to tourists, this is often what has happened. Someone asked for something before they said hello, and the interaction was already soured.
I will write a longer piece about this separately, because it is genuinely one of the most important things I teach and it is almost never explained in phrasebooks. For now: say bonjour first, always, before anything else.
2. S'il vous plaît (please)
The formal version of "please". You use s'il vous plaît with anyone you do not know well: shopkeepers, waiters, taxi drivers, hotel staff. The informal version, s'il te plaît, is for friends and family.
Where this matters for beginners: in English we sometimes drop "please" from short requests and it sounds fine. In French, dropping s'il vous plaît from a request to a stranger reads as noticeably blunt. You might be understood perfectly, but you will not be warmly received. The phrase is short enough and simple enough that there is no reason not to use it every time.
A note on pronunciation: the s'il part is said like "seel", not "sill". The vous rhymes with "oo" not "ow". Plait sounds like "play". Together: "seel voo play".
3. Excusez-moi (excuse me)
Use this to get someone's attention before you speak to them, or to move past someone on a crowded street or in a supermarket aisle. It is the opener for a question you need to ask a stranger: Excusez-moi, est-ce que vous pouvez m'aider? (excuse me, can you help me?).
The important distinction between excusez-moi and the next phrase is subtle but real. Excusez-moi is prospective: you say it before an interruption. Pardon is retrospective: after you have already bumped into someone or interrupted. Using the wrong one is not catastrophic, but getting them right makes you sound considerably more natural.
4. Pardon (sorry / pardon)
This one carries more weight than its brevity suggests. Pardon is what you say when you accidentally bump into someone, when you mishear something and need it repeated, when you need to squeeze past someone on public transport. It also functions as a slightly indignant "I beg your pardon?" when something surprises or offends you.
In everyday Paris life, pardon flows constantly. It is small, reflexive, and genuinely polite rather than performative. My students are sometimes surprised to find that French social interaction, which has a reputation for being brusque, is actually full of these small acknowledgements. The friction tourists sometimes encounter comes not from a lack of courtesy in French culture, but from a different set of conventions about when courtesy is expected.
5. Merci (thank you)
The most famous word on this list, and the one that needs the least explanation in terms of meaning. But a few useful things to know:
Merci beaucoup (thank you very much) is genuinely warm and appropriate in most situations. Merci bien is slightly more casual and is used between people who know each other a little. Je vous remercie (I thank you) is the more formal version, useful in professional contexts or when you want to be especially courteous.
When someone in a shop says bonne journée (have a good day) as you leave, the natural response is merci, vous aussi (thank you, you too). Learning this tiny exchange transformed one student's experience of shopping in Paris from an ordeal into something almost pleasant.
These five phrases cost almost nothing in time to learn. Each one is short, phonetically manageable, and immediately useful. But together they carry something more valuable than vocabulary: they carry an understanding that French is a social language, that courtesy is structural rather than optional, and that the way you begin an interaction shapes everything that follows.
That understanding is, in the end, the thing I most want to give my students.