Basic expressions: Greeting someone and apologizing for being late

🇫🇷 [Salut] is casual. Use it with friends, classmates, kids, or relaxed coworkers, not as your safest choice with strangers or in formal situations.

🇫🇷 [Salut] is casual. With someone you don't know well in France, [Bonjour] is usually the safer default.

💬 [Désolé] changes with the speaker: a woman says [désolée]. French often marks this kind of adjective to match who is speaking.

💬 French says [en retard] for being late: literally "in lateness," not a word-for-word match with English. You reuse it with other subjects too: [Il est en retard].

💬 In [n'est], the [e] of [ne] drops before a vowel, so it becomes [n']. You see this a lot: [je n'ai pas], [ce n'est pas].

💬 In [pas grave], [grave] does not mean "grave" in the English sense. It means serious, so [Ce n'est pas grave] is "It's not a big deal."