Common French Phrases for Travel: What to Say and How

Start every exchange with Bonjour

If you remember one thing from this guide, make it this: in France, you greet before you ask. Walking into a bakery, a pharmacy or a ticket office and launching straight into a question can come across as abrupt. A simple Bonjour first changes the tone of the whole exchange.

Use Bonjour during the day and Bonsoir in the evening. Adding madame or monsieur is polite and common in shops. When you leave, Merci, au revoir closes the exchange neatly.

The hints above are rough English approximations to get you started. French sounds don’t map perfectly onto English letters, so listen to a native recording of each phrase and copy that, rather than reading the respelling aloud forever. Our guide to French pronunciation for beginners explains the sounds that trip English speakers up most.

Ask for things with Je voudrais

Je voudrais… (zhuh voo-DREH) means “I would like…”. It is polite, flexible and works in cafés, bakeries, ticket offices and markets. Add the item and s’il vous plaît, and you have a complete request.

Note un and une: French nouns are masculine or feminine, and the word for “a” changes with them. On a trip, getting it wrong rarely blocks understanding, so don’t freeze over it. Learn each item with its article, as in un café or une baguette, and the right form will come more often over time.

In French, a question can simply be a statement with rising intonation. Je peux payer par carte ? with your voice going up at the end works perfectly well in everyday speech.

Find your way: Où est… ?

Où est… ? (oo EH) means “Where is…?”. Pair it with a place and you can ask for most things you need. Start with Excusez-moi to get someone’s attention politely.

The answer is usually harder than the question. Listen for three anchors: à gauche, à droite and tout droit. You don’t need every word around them. Note that à droite (on the right) and tout droit (straight on) sound similar at first; the final “t” sound in droite is the clue.

Keep the conversation going when you don’t understand

The phrases that help most on a trip are often the ones that rescue a conversation. Many beginners stop talking when they miss a reply. Instead, ask for a repeat or a slower version.

• Pardon ?: Sorry? / Pardon? Short and natural.
• Vous pouvez répéter, s’il vous plaît ?: Can you repeat, please?
• Plus lentement, s’il vous plaît.: More slowly, please.
• Je ne comprends pas.: I don’t understand.
• Vous parlez anglais ?: Do you speak English?

Try a short French attempt before switching to English. Even if the conversation then moves to English, opening with Bonjour and a French question is usually well received.

A short café dialogue to practise

Read it aloud twice, once as each person. Then hide the French and try to say your lines from the English. Sur place ou à emporter ? is worth learning to recognise, because you will hear it at many counters.

Tu or vous? A quick rule for travellers

French has two words for “you”. Vous is polite and also plural; tu is informal and singular. As a traveller, the safe default is simple: use vous with anyone you don’t know, including shop staff, servers, hotel receptionists, drivers and strangers in the street. That is why every question in this guide uses vous.

You will hear tu between friends, within families, with children and among many young people. If someone says On peut se tutoyer (We can use tu), they are inviting you to switch. It is friendly to accept, but you don’t need to take the first step.

Two more phrases help you sound polite without much effort. Bonne journée (Have a good day) is a common way to say goodbye in the daytime; Bonne soirée (Have a good evening) works later. When someone thanks you, reply De rien (You’re welcome) or the more formal Je vous en prie.

Pronunciation hint: in journée, the j is soft, like the “s” in “measure”, not the “j” in “jump”. The same sound appears in bonjour and je.

How to prepare in the week before your trip

You don’t need hundreds of phrases. A short, spoken routine over a few days can make the core set feel much more familiar.

1. Pick the situations you will actually face: transport, food, accommodation, shops.
2. Choose four or five phrases for each situation.
3. Listen to a native recording and repeat each phrase out loud.
4. The next day, try to say them from the English before checking.
5. Role-play a full exchange, such as buying a ticket, from greeting to goodbye.

Testing yourself, rather than only rereading, helps. In a study by Karpicke and Roediger, students who kept practising recall of foreign-language word pairs remembered far more a week later than students who only kept restudying them. The principle behind our vocabulary review routine applies just as well to French travel phrases.

If you’d like guided practice, SAY8 includes scripted real-life roleplays, such as ordering at a café or asking for directions, where you speak your lines out loud with Maya, the app’s guide. A short daily expression of the day keeps the habit going.