Choose a greeting for the situation
Use bonjour as a broadly useful daytime greeting and salut in informal situations. Enchanté or enchantée means “pleased to meet you”; it belongs after an introduction rather than replacing every hello. The written gender ending does not add an extra syllable in the usual pronunciation of this word.
Listen to Bonjour with model audio. Keep the nasal vowel in the first part, then let the word finish naturally. French phrase-final prominence is normal; the goal is to avoid a large English-style distortion, not to ban any emphasis on the final syllable.
Practise a greeting and one reply as an exchange. Then try a farewell appropriate to the moment. The first-contact unit supplies the context so that you practise when to use a line as well as how it sounds.
Mouth position and airflow
Keep the nasal vowel in bon and finish bonjour as a smooth phrase, without adding a separate n sound.
Three examples to practise
| Round | French target |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bonjour. |
| 2 | Salut. |
| 3 | Enchanté. |
Common mistakes and a correction
- Avoid pronouncing bonjour with a hard n.
- Avoid making salut sound like English salute.
- Avoid overstressing every syllable.
Five-minute practice ladder
- Listen to bonjour.
- Repeat it slowly.
- Say salut lightly.
- Say enchanté with a clear é.
- Use one greeting in a short exchange.