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LEARNING FRENCH

How to talk email, websites, social media and phone numbers in French

It's a very common experience to have to give out your phone number or email address in France, take down the address of a website or talk about social media posts, and there is some specialist vocabulary that you will need.

Published: 2 August 2022 15:51 CEST
Updated: 8 March 2024 11:34 CET
How to talk email, websites, social media and phone numbers in French
Punctuation marks take on crucial importance for internet activity. Photo by Damien MEYER / AFP

The correct names for punctuation marks used to be fairly low down on any French-learner’s list, but these days they are vital whenever you need to explain an email address, website or social media account.

Likewise if you want to talk about websites, or social media posts, there are some things that you need to know. 

Punctuation

Obviously punctuation points have their own names in France, and making sure you get the periods, dashes and underscores correct is vital to giving out account details. 

Full stop/period . point. Pronounced pwan, this is most commonly heard for French websites or email addresses which end in .fr (pronounced pwan eff eyre).

If you have a site that ends in .com you say ‘com’ as a word just as you would in English – pwan com – and if the website is a government site such as the tax office it will end with .gouv.fr (pwan goov pwan eff eyre).

At symbol @ Arobase – so for example the email address jean.dupont@hotmail.fr would be jean pwan dupont arobas hotmail pwan eff eyre 

Ampersand/and symbol & esperluette

Dash – tiret

Underscore _ tiret bas 

Forward slash / barre oblique

Upper case/capital letters – Majuscule (or lettre majuscule)

Lower case – miniscule

The following punctuation points are less common in email or web addresses, but worth knowing anyway;

Comma , virgule. In France a decimal point is indicated with a comma so two and a half would be 2,5 (deux virgule cinq)

Exclamation mark ! point d’exclamation – when you are writing in French you always leave a space between the final letter of the word and the exclamation mark – comme ça !

Question mark ? point d’interrogation – likewise, leave a space between the final character and a question mark 

Brackets/parentheses ( ) parenthèse

Quotation marks « » guillemets. Just as in English you can use these in spoken French to make a sarcastic point. For example describing someone as “entre guillements hônnete” means they are “quote honest”, making it clear that you do not think they are honest at all.

Numbers

If you need to give your phone number out, the key thing to know is that French people pair the numbers in a phone number when speaking.

So say your number is 06 12 34 56 78, in French you would say zero six, douze, trente-quatre, cinqante-six, soixante-dix- huit (zero six, twelve, thirty four, fifty six, seventy eight, rather than one, two, three, four etc)

Most mobile numbers in France begin with 06 and ‘zero six‘ is a slangy way of talking about your phone number.

Donne-moi ton zero six pour qu’on puisse se capter parfois. – Give me your number so that we can hang out sometime.

Social media

If you want to give out your Twitter or Instagram handle, the chances are you might need to know some punctuation terms as described above.

Otherwise the good news is that a lot of English-language social media terms are used in France too.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have the same names in France and have entered the language in other ways too, for example you might describe your dinner as très instagrammable – ie it’s photogenic and would look good on Instagram.

You can suivre (follow) a person or aime (like) or retweet (take a wild guess) their posts. You’ll often hear the English words for these terms too, though pronounced with a French accent.

There is a French translation for hashtag – it’s mot-dièse – but in reality hashtag is also very widely used.

Tech is one of those areas where new concepts come along so quickly that the English terms often get embedded into everyday use before the Academie française can think up a French alternative.

There’s also the phenomenon of English terms being mildly ‘Frenchified’ such as having a slightly different pronunciation or being adapted to sound more French, such as the below UberEats advert, which uses the words ‘swiper, matcher, dater’ – not really correct French but clearly instantly understandable to the young demographic that the advert is aimed at. 

‘Swipe, match, date then regret adding ‘chef’ to your bio’ – Photo: The Local

READ ALSO Why do French adverts love to use English words?

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LEARNING FRENCH

Reader question: Should I use Madame or Mademoiselle in France?

You might have heard that the use of the title Mademoiselle has become a little controversial in modern France - so should you still use it? And if so, when?

Published: 18 September 2024 11:52 CEST
Reader question: Should I use Madame or Mademoiselle in France?

As most language learners will be aware, in French the title for men is Monsieur, while women can be referred to as Madame or Mademoiselle.

These can be used as both a title to talk about someone – eg Monsieur Mbappé, Madame Macron – or to address them directly, Bonjour Monsieur, Bonsoir Madame.

Adding a Monsieur/Madame after your greeting makes it a little more formal and respectful – you might therefore hear it used by young people when greeting an older person or in a formal setting such as a meeting.

Likewise referring to someone as ‘le monsieur’ is usually heard in customer service settings and indicates a little extra politeness – eg le monsieur a un rendez-vous – the gentleman has an appointment.

But when referring to women you have a choice of whether to use Madame or Mademoiselle.

Historically, this referred to a woman’s marital status – Madame was for married women, Mademoiselle was for unmarried women. In fact the word oiselle is an old-fashioned term meaning virgin

Men get called Monsieur whether they are married or not, because in patriarchal societies men don’t get defined by their marital status.

However the meaning of Madame has shifted in France, and since roughly the second half of the 20th century Madame began to become more about age than about marital status.

Mademoiselle came to be used more for girls and young women, and Madame for older women, and whether or not they were married.

However, within the last decade there has been another shift, with some people calling for Mademoiselle to be scrapped altogether, saying it is outdated and sexist. If men get a single title, why can’t women?

In 2012 the term Mademoiselle was officially banned from all legal forms in France and you will notice on an increasing number of websites the box for civilité (title) contains only options for monsieur or madame.

Communications from official bodies such as the préfecture refer to all women as Madame, while most commercial organisations (eg your bank) do too. 

An increasing number of younger French women say that they dislike the term Mademoiselle.

Julie, a 26-year-old archaeology student, told The Local: “In the law it is forbidden to use Mademoiselle now, and I like it, we’re not completely there yet but we are getting used to it, and honestly it is much better Madame and Monsieur, otherwise if you want to use Mademoiselle, you have to use jeune-homme.

“When someone addresses me they use Mademoiselle with me, which most of the times I’m okay with, but sometimes you feel as if the person addressing you as Mademoiselle has a hidden and weird motive behind it, for example using it to flirt and it annoys me a lot.”

Louise, 32-year-old teacher, said: “I always use Madame, it allows me not to differentiate between women and men. Also it decreases the chances of assuming whether that person is married or not, or her age, or her looks.

“Some people address me as Madame and others as Mademoiselle but personally, I prefer Madame, I use Madame with everyone, even my young pupils, to eliminate the differentiation between them.'”

The term itself is not outlawed, however, and plenty of people do still use it, especially French people of the older generation.

It might also depend on the situation – for example a young waitress in a café could be referred to as Mademoiselle but if you’re talking to a younger work colleague you would more likely use Madame.

So which should you use?

Well in good news, being a foreigner gets you a certain leeway on French language battles – if you use Mademoiselle incorrectly and are speaking with a foreign accent, most French people will be more likely to assume that you have made a language mistake because you are foreign, rather than making an etiquette gaffe.

As outlined above; Mademoiselle is fine for children and teenagers while some women in their 20s, especially their early 20s, may not object to it.

You’ll also find demographic differences with older French people being more likely to use Mademoiselle widely.

If in doubt, however, it’s probably safer to use Madame.

Do you or your French friends/neighbours/colleagues use Mademoiselle? Share your experiences in the comments section below

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