How to exchange email addresses in France

When you’re at a bar in France and you meet a new French person, it’s difficult to speak with her in French.
It’s often noisy, you can’t hear every word so you don’t understand everything… Maybe you just nod.

But you KNOW you’d like to meet again. At a café maybe.
So you want to ask for her email address. In French. And give yours.

How to properly exchange email addresses in French?
This is what we’ll see in today’s episode of Comme une Française TV.


Click to watch « How to exchange email addresses in French »:

Et toi?
Your French will improve ONLY if you take action on what you learn on Comme une Française TV.

Share your experience by leaving a comment below this video :
Did you ever leave your email to a French person and got misunderstood? How did it go?
What will you do next time?

The comment section is the best area to start discussions and ask questions!

A la semaine prochaine,

Géraldine

Join the conversation!

  • Quelqu’un m’a donné leur email et me dit “SIP.Paris” et le mot “tirer” après. Quel signifie le mot “tirer” dans un address email? C’est une type de punctuation?

    • Bonjour Stephen

      Il s’agit tout simplement d’une typographie, le mot “tiret” ou petit trait veut dire “dash” ou “hyphen”.

      Bonne journée,

      Fabien
      Comme Une Française Team

  • Hi Géraldine

    Thank you very much for this helpful video. Please could you tell me how to say “.co.uk” in French? Thank you again.

  • Hi Geraldine,
    Thanks so much for this helpful video. If you have to spell out your email and need to say “capital S” or “in lowercase”, how would you say those phrases? And what about “dash” and “underscore”? Thanks again.

    • Bonjour Liz,
      You’d say “S majuscule”, “S minuscule”, “tiret” (even though for this one, lots of people call it “tiret du 6”) and “underscore” (even though for this one, lots of people call it “tiret du 8”).

  • Si on a une adresse qui se terminent avec “.org” est-ce qu’on dit “point org” ou est-ce qu’on épelle les lettres “point oh air zhay”?

    I know email is what’s used in France more but for the AP French exam in the US, they always use courriel so we have to make sure students here in the states are familiar with that.

    I found your site via youtube and look forward to sharing it with my students this year!

  • is it correct to say «Quelle est votre adresse électronique?» Could you say how to include the ( _) underscore and the (-) in a e-mail, please? Thank you! 🙂 Love your videos!

    • Bonjour Dai,

      “Quel est votre email ?” est plus simple. 🙂

      _ = underscore
      – = tiret

      You’re welcome 🙂

  • hello, thank you that was truly helpful!
    by the way could you please teach how to say
    “lets exchange email addresses ! here’s mine” or something similar?
    actually I’m doing french exchange and want to ask for her email address in my letter so we can start getting into contact before we even meet.

    please help!

    • Hi Joanna,

      you can say “Voici mon email” and usually people will give theirs.
      Or you can add “quel est le tien ?”

  • What type of email services do the French use? I would like to set up and email address that most French use.

    Thank you.

      • Moi, j’utilise GMail pour tous mes couriels (j’habite en angleterre). Aussi, je trouve qu’il y a tous les accents, de chaque pays, sur mon smartphone – un Samsung Galaxy. Bonne journée pour demain.

  • I needed to give my email address in French today on the phone, but didn’t know how to say “@” without it sounding like “a”. Now I do – thanks!

  • Bonjour Geraldine,
    Je veux te remercier pour avoir créé ce site! C’est extraordinaire 🙂 j’aime bien le concept. Je trouve ta façon d’enseigner trés professionnel et j’apprends beaucoup vocabulaire avec toi mais surtout ceux petits mots que les français utilisent dans leur vie quotidienne.

    J’ai une petite demande. Pourrais-tu faire une vidéo avec du vocabulaire technique, s’il te plaît ? C’est-à-dire des mots et expressions qui s’utilisent au bureau, au travail. Serait-ce possible ?

  • Geraldine – like many of the comments before mine, I am so excited to find your website and all of this fantastic information. I teach french to middle school students and they are so excited to learn “real” and useful French rather than the text book information only………hearing you speak reminds me of my student days in Nice – best time ever!!!!

  • I am taking the exam DELF in October and my professeur has told me to use courriel or mél, never email. Also when I wrote about texts I used texto and was corrected with SMS. Is your advice based on less formal conversation and should I stick to my beliefs that email and texto are acceptable French.

    • Bonjour Denise,

      For your exam, I’d recommend you listen to your teacher and use courriel and mél and SMS. Because exams have their own standards.

      However, in real life (formal or informal), you can forget about courriel and mél. 🙂
      SMS is used just like texto so both are fine.

      • merci Geraldine. Je veux demande le question à mon professeur mais la rentrée pour la formation est le 25 septembre (très tard) et l’examen est le 7 octobre donc pas beaucoup de temps pour le discussion avant. Merci encore

  • I am so glad I found you and the practical advice you generously share with all your internet friends. We found you because of the Connexion magazine. We are American ex-pats living in Provence. We have been going to school to learn French for years and I find your advice on daily communications amazingly helpful.
    Now to comment on difficulties encountered with exchanging email addresses. I tried to spell my email over the phone. I have difficulty pronouncing with the French letters “u” and “r”, so I decided to say a word that begins with this letter. Now I had to think of a French word that begins with the misunderstood letters, where I can usually say an English word. This was really difficult. For example “r” comme rouge and “u” come une. My email has many letters so it was painful.

  • Salut! Je suis un homme et fier de dire que votre site est super chouette!! J’appris moi-même le français depuis six ans, mais je n’avais jamais eu une resource pour apprendre le comportement français!?! Merci à vous, je serai capable de faire mieux mes etudes, et si mon rêve de vivre à Paris devient possible, peut-être j’evitera le terreur de la vie en general! 😉 Merci encore!

    • Désolé, l’órdinateur ne voulait pas ajouter l’accent aigu! Aussi, je sais que j’aurais dû dire “grace à vous” et “peut-être que j’évitera.” A part de ça, il est le meillure que je peut parle la langue. J’ai toujours une question à l’égard des phrases comme “je suis fier de/à dire.” Ça me condfond toujours. C’est tout, Merci beaucoup!

    • Salut James,

      Génial ! Je croise les doigts pour que ton rêve de vivre à Paris soit possible aussi. 🙂

  • I love watching these videos. We use very old textbooks in my high school class and so when I try to talk with a an actual french person or somebody who lived in France they always give me a funny look like “why do you use that word you weirdo?” I have found a site that allows high school students around the globe to connect and become penpals and I people my age have sent me several messages. Should I address the email a certain way? (like how do you say “Dear So and So” in french?) Being they are my age but I do not know them very well, should I use tu or vous?
    Thank you!
    Abby
    P.S. It would be awesome if you could do a video on what the school system/ life is like there because it is so different there!

  • Thank you so much for making these videos! That’s very nice of you! My little girls and I are learning French. I like watching Tchoupi et Doudou with them:)

    • Bonjour Kristie,
      Watching “dessins animés” with your little ones is a great way to learn French. 🙂

  • Great site and topic. I think that it should be clarified that “courriel” is not, in fact, weird, but the term used by Québécois and Francophones in Canada.

    • Bonjour Melanie,

      YES! Thanks for your very precious input.
      I’ve always wondered where this word came from and now we know!

  • I teach French conversaton in England and this is a perfect example of just the sort of things i get asked in my class and that i don`t know!!!! now I do! Merci mille fois!!

  • Geraldine, you are amazing! You think of the most useful topics and present the information in such an accessible way. Thank you so much for these videos. They’re tremendously helpful.

    Also I’m envious of every item in your wardrobe! 🙂

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