Is there a French greeting only for the morning?

Not in France. Bonjour is the greeting from the start of the day until the evening.

When do you switch from bonjour to bonsoir?

In the evening. There is no fixed hour; the end of the working day is a good guide.

French · phrasebook

How to say good morning in French

Good morning in French is bonjour. France has no separate greeting for the morning: bonjour opens the day and stays in use until the evening, when bonsoir replaces it.

Aurélien CuvelierSep 19, 2026

bonjour

hello

anyone

The ways to say it

bonjour

hello

anyone

How to use it

English cuts the day into morning, afternoon and evening greetings. French cuts it in two. The first exchange below is a morning one: the greeting is bonjour, and the morning appears in the question that follows it, not in the greeting.

With a stranger, add a title and keep vous, as the customer does at the bakery in the second exchange. With a friend, a first name and tu are enough.

Watch out

A word-for-word good morning is not what people say in France. If you build one from the French words for good and morning, you will be understood and marked as a visitor.

In a real conversation

Each exchange is a line and its reply. Greyed letters are written and not pronounced. A tie marks a liaison, with the sound you hear under it. A label under a verb names its tense when it is not the present.

Bonjour Léa ! Tu vas bien ce matin ?Hello Léa! Are you doing well this morning?Bonjour ! Ça va, et toi ?Hello! I'm fine, and you?

Bonjour madame ! Je voudrais deux croissants, s'il vous plaît.Hello madam! I would like two croissants, please.Bonjour monsieur ! Voilà, ça fait deux euros.Hello sir! Here you go, that comes to two euros.

Next to it: bonsoir

Bonsoir Léa, tu rentres du travail maintenant ?Good evening Léa, are you coming home from work now?Bonsoir ! Oui, je suis fatiguée, la journée était longue.Good evening! Yes, I am tired, the day was long.

Bonsoir madame, vous fermez bientôt ?Good evening madam, are you closing soon?Bonsoir monsieur, dans dix minutes. Vous avez le temps.Good evening sir, in ten minutes. You have time.

Questions people ask

Is there a French greeting only for the morning?: Not in France. Bonjour is the greeting from the start of the day until the evening.
When do you switch from bonjour to bonsoir?: In the evening. There is no fixed hour; the end of the working day is a good guide.

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Each one with its tu and vous forms, its register and real exchanges.

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Written by

Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck

Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.

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