10 UNIT 1 Salutations Greetings

5 DanslarueIn the street

You want to fi nd out where some places are in the village. The important thing is to know what to ask for, then people will point you in the right direction.

VOCA

B Pardon madame, la boulangerie s’il vous plaît?excuse me, where is the baker’s please?

Try to guess which places are mentioned in the following examples.

a Pardon monsieur, la poste s’il vous plaît? b Pardon mademoiselle, l’offi ce du tourisme s’il vous plaît? c Pardon madame, le supermarché s’il vous plaît? d Pardon madame, le garage Citroën s’il vous plaît?

UnpeudegrammaireA bit of grammar

So far you may have noticed three different ways of spelling the word for good:

Bon voyage!Bonne année!Bonnes vacances!

This is because in French, nouns (words which represent objects, people or ideas) have a gender; they can be either feminine or masculine. Un voyage a journey is masculine, une année a year is feminine, des vacances holidays is feminine but also plural.

The gender of nouns does not follow any logical pattern so you will need to be aware of the gender of every noun you learn.

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