6.7 On the telephone and by e-mail — Epoché
What you will be able to do Open a telephone call with the fixed word French uses for it, which is not the greeting you would use in the street. Say who you are, ask for somebody, and understand the two sentences that mean hold on and I am putting you through . Get out of a wrong number politely, and say when you will call back. Close an electronic letter at the right height, choosing from a ladder of four formulas whose steps an English speaker cannot see. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Allô ? Qui est à l'appareil ? [1] Hello? Who am I speaking to? Allô, qui est à l’appareil, s’il vous plaît ? [2] Hello, who is speaking, please? Prerequisites : 6.6 — you need the station exchanges, because the telephone runs on the same short scripted turns. See 6.6 Conversation if you have not done it. The telephone takes away the other person's face, and with it the gestures, the pointing and the lip-reading that carry a beginner through a conversation in the street. What replaces them is ritual. French telephone openings are almost completely fixed, which is a gift: the first four turns of any call are predictable, and once you are through them you are in an ordinary conversation. The second half of the lesson is writing, and it contains the one thing in this volume that has no exact English counterpart for its ordered steps. French closes a letter or an electronic message with a formula whose height has distinct steps, and French speakers broadly agree on their order. An English speaker who signs off warmly to a tax official, or curtly to a friend, has said something they did not mean to say. Who is speaking to whom On the telephone the default is formal, and it is more strongly formal than face to face, because the person answering does not know who you are. Even a call to a friend's household may be answered by somebody you have never met, and the first two turns are therefore usually in the formal form until you know whose voice it is. In writing, the register is set by the closing formula rather than by the pronoun, which is the reverse of speech. A message can use the formal pronoun throughout and still end on a warm step of the ladder, and that combination is completely normal between colleagues who like each other. The thing to get right is the last line, not the pronoun. The clearest familiar quotation in the tables below is there on purpose: it is the bottom step of the ladder, the one you write to your family. It is marked in the right-hand column. Do not send it to anybody you have not met. How English does it English answers the telephone with its ordinary greeting; French has a word reserved for it. The French telephone word is used almost only on the telephone. You will not hear it in a shop or across a garden fence. It is how you pick up a private call and how you check that the line is still there; the ordinary daylight greeting follows it, and a company usually answers with a name and bonjour , as in the first dialogue below. Learn the telephone word as a separate item of vocabulary. English says this is Henry ; French says Henry at the apparatus . The French self-identification uses a noun meaning a device or an instrument, which here means the telephone. There is no verb in it. It is one of those fixed phrases that will never make sense if you take it apart, and it takes two seconds to learn as a lump. English asks who's calling with a verb of calling; French asks who is at the apparatus . The same noun does the work again. Notice that the French question is about position rather than action, which is why no verb of telephoning appears in it. English says hold on ; French says do not leave . The idiom is a negative imperative built on a verb meaning to leave or to quit, and the thing you are told not to leave is the line. It sounds abrupt in translation and is perfectly polite in French, especially with the polite phrase added. English sign-offs are a matter of taste; French sign-offs are a matter of height. This is the real difference and it is worth stating carefully. English has yours sincerely , best regards , best , cheers and half a dozen others, and educated English speakers disagree about what they mean. French has a short ordered set, French speakers broadly agree on the order, and the choice is read as a statement about the relationship. There is little to improvise: you pick a step. The fixed opening French English Note Allô ? Qui est à l'appareil ? [1] Hello? Who am I speaking to? the telephone word, then the question about who is there Allô, qui est à l’appareil, s’il vous plaît ? [2] Hello, who is speaking, please? the same with the polite phrase; the fully formal version Qui est à l'appareil ? [3] Who's speaking? the question on its own; four words Pardonnez-moi, qui est à l'appareil ? [4] Who is calling, please? with an apology in front, which softens it considerably Puis-je savoir qui est à l'appareil ? [5] May I ask who's calling? the most formal of the five; a switchboard will say this Bonjour ! Ogawa à l'appareil. [6] Hello. This is Ogawa speaking. identifying yourself: a name and the noun, with no verb Puis-je parler à Judy ? [7] Can I speak with Judy? asking for a person by name Puis-je parler au directeur ? [8] Can I speak with the director? asking for a person by office, with the contracted preposition J'aimerais parler à Johano. [9] I would like to speak to Johano. the same with the polite conditional of a verb of liking Rows one to five are all versions of one question, and rows six to nine are all versions of one answer and one request. That is the whole opening of a French telephone call: two moves, with a choice of register in each. Learn one of each and you can make any call; learn all of them and you will recognise whatever comes back at you. The noun that appears in rows one to six is the key to the whole set. Its ordinary meaning is a device or an instrument, an