The Bonjour Rule: French Etiquette for Visitors

You can have flawless French grammar, walk into a Paris bakery, ask for your croissant — and still get a cold, clipped reply. Meanwhile a tourist who barely speaks a word, but who opens every single interaction with a warm bonjour, gets smiles. The difference isn’t vocabulary. It’s one small ritual that locals care about more than almost anything else, and that no one will ever explain to you. They’ll just quietly decide you were mal élevé — badly brought up. Here’s how to stay on the right side of it.

The one rule: always open with bonjour

In France you greet before you transact. Before you ask directions, order a coffee, or pay at the till, you say bonjour to the person in front of you. It sounds trivial. It isn’t.

Bonjour literally fuses bon and jour — “good day” — but functionally it carries three messages at once: I see you. I respect your space. I’m entering this politely. It descends from politesse, the French value of politeness as a near-moral duty rather than optional charm. Acknowledging a person before making demands of them is treated as basic decency.

Skip it and you read as dismissive — as if the other person were a vending machine. The usual penalty is colder, slower, more literal service. And the order matters: a cheerful merci at the end won’t rescue an interaction that began with a bare request.

Where the rule applies

The smaller and more personal the space, the more your greeting is noticed.

Situation	What to say
Bonjour !	Entering a bakery, shop, or pharmacy
Bonjour, un café, s'il vous plaît.	Ordering in a café
Bonjour, excusez-moi, où est la gare ?	Approaching someone with a question
Bonjour madame.	Passing a neighbour in your building

Rule of thumb: if you’re entering someone’s space or about to speak to them — yes, even strangers in a lift — lead with bonjour.

Bonjour or bonsoir? And how to close politely

A polite French interaction is bookended: a greeting to open, a farewell to close. Visitors remember the open and forget the close.

Use bonjour through the day, and bonsoir from late afternoon on — there’s no hard cutoff, so take your cue from locals, but around 18h is typical. Save salut strictly for friends and peers; it’s far too casual for a shopkeeper you don’t know. If you want the full range of casual options, our guide to bonjour, salut, and coucou breaks them down.

French	English	When
Bonjour	Hello / good day	daytime, until ~18h
Bonsoir	Good evening	late afternoon on
Au revoir	Goodbye	standard close, any time
Bonne journée	Have a good day	leaving in the daytime
Bonne soirée	Have a good evening	leaving in the evening

Watch one trap: bonne nuit means “good night” at bedtime only — it’s not a generic evening goodbye. For that, use bonne soirée. The minimum polite exit from any shop, even one you bought nothing in, is simply Merci, au revoir. Hitting both the open and the close is most of what it takes to “pass” as polite.

The next faux pas, ranked by how much offense they cause

Once you’ve nailed bonjour, here’s what trips up respectful visitors most — worst first.

1. Defaulting straight to English

Opening in English — or just barreling ahead in it — lands as you should already speak my language. The fix is cheap and transforms the response: greet first, then ask permission to switch.

French	English
Bonjour ! Parlez-vous anglais ?	Hello! Do you speak English?
Bonjour, je parle un peu français.	Hello, I speak a little French.

Many people who’d stonewall an English-first opener will happily switch once you’ve shown the courtesy of a greeting and a visible attempt.

2. Tu vs vous — when in doubt, vous

Using tu with a stranger, a clerk, or anyone older is over-familiar and grating. Vous is the safe default for everyone you don’t personally know. (The verbs exist as real words: tutoyer is to address someone as tu, and vouvoyer is to use vous.) Say Vous allez bien ? — not Tu vas bien ? — to someone behind a counter. French forgives excess politeness far more readily than misplaced familiarity, so when in doubt, vous. Our full breakdown of tu vs vous walks through the gray areas.

3. Speaking loudly

Public French volume is lower than American English. Nervous visitors get louder and over-enunciate, which reads as boorish in cafés, trains, and museums. Volume doesn’t aid comprehension — match the room: quieter, calmer, shorter sentences.

4. Oversharing with strangers

The warm-stranger script — life story to the waiter, effusive small talk — reads as intrusive, not friendly. French interactions with strangers start formal and earn warmth. Keep it brief and courteous; let the relationship open before you do.

5. The “s’il vous plaît” magic-word trap

English speakers sprinkle s’il vous plaît on everything, thinking it buys politeness. In French, politeness lives in acknowledging the person, phrasing, and tone — not in repeating one phrase. Use it once, where it belongs: Je voudrais un café, s’il vous plaît.

La bise — follow, don’t initiate

La bise, the cheek-kiss greeting, is for people you know — not a tool to deploy on strangers. (You don’t actually kiss; cheeks touch lightly and you make a small kiss sound in the air.) The count is regional and even locals hesitate: two around Paris, three in parts of the south, sometimes four in the east, one in Brittany.

In formal, business, or stranger-transaction settings, a handshake — une poignée de main — is correct, and in shops no physical greeting is expected at all. The practical rule for a visitor: follow, don’t initiate. If you’d rather not bise, simply offer your hand for a handshake before the other person leans in.

Quick fixes for the most common slips

• Launching into the request. ❌ Excusez-moi, où est la gare ? → ✅ Bonjour, excusez-moi… The greeting comes even before “excuse me.”
• Greeting an adult woman as mademoiselle. Default to madame; mademoiselle has largely retired from use.
• Greeting the same person twice. One bonjour per interaction. For a genuine second encounter that day, use re-bonjour.
• A false-friend disaster: Je suis excité(e) does not mean “I’m excited” — it implies sexual arousal. Say J’ai hâte instead. See more in our guide to French false friends.
• Asking the time? Vous avez l’heure ?, not Tu as l’heure ? — and our piece on telling time in French covers the answer you’ll get back.

You don’t need fluent French to be welcomed in France. You need bonjour, you need vous, and you need to greet before you ask. Master those three reflexes and you’ll find that respect travels far further than vocabulary ever could. Try it your very first morning — open with a warm Bonjour madame — and watch the door swing open.