Transcript of the video

Never say je veux in French when addressing someone.

Hello everyone, I hope you are well.

Today, I'm back with a new French video.

If you are new to the channel, I am Elisabeth.

On this channel, I offer you videos to learn the real French spoken in everyday life by French speakers and I also offer you to learn French in a more playful way, a little more fun than the French you can learn in books.

You may already know this, but in France, politeness is something very important.

Always say thank you, please, good morning, have a nice day.

This is really important in France.

People can get offended very quickly if you are not very polite.

Whether it is in a shop, in a restaurant, in a café, at work with friends, people can get offended very quickly if you are not very polite with them and you do not put the forms.

Forms of politeness, formulas of politeness.

It is therefore very important in France to respect certain rules.

When you learn a language in general, you start by learning the present tense conjugation.

This is the first thing we do when we learn a language, because it is the conjugation that we will use most frequently, especially in French, where conjugation is really very complex for people who learn French for students.

However, for some verbs, it is very important to never use them in the present tense.

This is the case of the verb to want that we will see here.

Never say je veux in French when addressing someone.

On the contrary, you have to say I would like to.

It is the conditional of the verb I want in the first person singular.

I would like instead of I want. Indeed, I want gives the impression that you are giving an order to someone and therefore that you are a bit aggressive, you order: I want.

Whereas if you say I would like to, it's a much more polite, much softer way of speaking.

It gives the impression that you want something, that it is a wish.

The person you are talking to has more choice.

And by the way, I don't know if you agree with me, but in general, when we ask someone nicely for something, they are more likely to be nice to us in return.

When you are in a café, for example, don't say I want a Coke to the waiter. But say I'd like a Coke.

In a shoe store, if you want to try on shoes, don't say I want to try on this model in size 40.

Say rather I would like to try this model of shoes in size 40.

In a meeting with colleagues, in class or if you are, for example, visiting a museum with a guide in French, say, I would like to ask a question and above all, do not say I want to ask a question.

If, for example, you are in the street and the person in front of you is a little slow, you want to ask him to move aside, say, excuse me, I would like to pass, and not excuse me, I want to pass.

If there are several of you, it's the same, prefer the conditional to the present.

If you walk into a restaurant. Say, we'd like a table for six for dinner.

Rather than saying we want a table for six for dinner, it's more polite to say we would.

Moreover, in oral language in general, when we speak about several people, about us, we say rather "we" than "us", we can say we would like a table for six for dinner, it is also correct and in spoken language, we generally use more the form "we" with the conjugation in the third person singular than the form, we which is really very formal in oral language to speak about a group of people.

That's it for today.

I hope you enjoyed this video and that you remembered that you should never say to a French person je veux, but that you should say je voudrais.

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See you soon.