Your name and where you are from

Enchanté and enchantée sound exactly the same; the extra e is only there in writing, for a woman.

After hello and how are you, the next step is to say who you are. French introduces a name with a reflexive verb, s’appeler, literally to call oneself: je m’appelle Sophie is I call myself Sophie. This unit covers asking and giving names, the word enchanté that follows an introduction, and how to say which country you come from and where you live, including the small words au, en and aux that go before country names.

Names

To ask a name politely, say Comment vous appelez-vous ? (What is your name?). With a friend or a child it becomes Comment tu t’appelles ? or, very commonly in speech, Tu t’appelles comment ? The answer is Je m’appelle followed by your name. A shorter and very natural alternative is Moi, c’est Thomas (Me, I am Thomas), often used when people introduce themselves in a group. To introduce someone else, use Je vous présente (polite) or Je te présente (informal): Je vous présente ma collègue, Inès.

Enchanté

After an introduction people say enchanté, which means delighted and works like nice to meet you. A woman writes it enchantée, with an extra e, because the word agrees with the person speaking. The two forms sound exactly the same. You can make it fuller with Enchanté de faire votre connaissance (Delighted to make your acquaintance), which is formal, or simply answer Moi aussi (Me too) or Enchanté, moi aussi. In a relaxed group, a smile, salut and a name are often enough.

Where you are from

There are two common ways to say where you are from. Je suis de Séoul (I am from Seoul) or je viens de Séoul (I come from Seoul) work with cities. For countries, you can use a nationality: Je suis coréen (I am Korean, said by a man) or je suis coréenne (said by a woman). Nationality adjectives are written in lower case, je suis français, but the noun for a person takes a capital: un Français, une Coréenne. Like other adjectives, many nationalities change in the feminine and sound different too: coréen and coréenne, français and française, américain and américaine, japonais and japonaise, chinois and chinoise. A few, such as belge (Belgian) and suisse (Swiss), are the same for both.

Countries and prepositions

Country names in French have a gender, and gender helps decide the small word for in or to. Feminine countries, which usually end in e, take en: la France, en France; la Corée, en Corée; la Chine, en Chine. Most singular masculine countries take au, a contraction of à le: le Canada, au Canada; le Japon, au Japon; le Mexique, au Mexique, a masculine country ending in e. Masculine country names beginning with a vowel or silent h take en, as in en Iran. Plural ones take aux: les États-Unis, aux États-Unis. To say from, the pattern is de France, de Corée, du Canada, du Japon, des États-Unis. Cities take à: J’habite à Paris (I live in Paris), à Séoul, à Montréal.