Ch.2: Au revoir! - Goodbye

 
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French Starter Pack
CONTENTS:
Introduction:
1 Greetings
2 Goodbye
3 Ça va?
4 What's your name?
Famous people
4a Alphabet
5 Colours
6 Numbers 1-12
7 Ages
8 Months
9 Numbers 13 - 31
10 Birthdays
11 Days of the week
12 Today's date
13 Pets
14 Brothers & sisters
15 Consolidation / assessment
16 En classe

What you will learn in Section 2

Leaving the classroom at the end of the school day

Observe how grown-ups say goodbye...

Parents collecting children outside a primary school in Villeneuve d'Ascq

You see tis section's key words written on the screen at the end of the video sequence...

You will see how French children and their teachers say 'Goodbye' at the end of the school day, and how children and grown-ups say 'Goodbye' at other times.
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LANGUAGE AWARENESS: What we mean when we say 'Goodbye'

Saying 'goodbye' to different people
You say 'goodbye' to people all the time. Look around you, at people you see in your community.

  • What do say to your friends when you part?
  • How do you 'goodbye' your teachers at the end of school?
  • ..and what do they say to you?
  • What do grown-ups say when leave?

Write a page for your Language Portfolio about what you notice. Be a Language Detective - you are beginning to find out the importance of language and how we use it in our lives!

Saying 'goodbye' in different languages
We made a table of how you say 'goodbye' politely in different world languages. In some of them , the person is saying - 'May God look after you' The Latin word for God is 'dieu'. Can you see 'God' in any of these 'goodbyes'?

English
German
Spanish
French
Goodbye
auf Wiedersehen
adios
Au revoir

In French and German , the person is saying 'Until we meet again' . In Danish, you might recognise 'farewell' - 'look after yourself' or 'Keep smiling'.....

Find out more....
You could make a display of how people say "goodbye" in as many different countries and languages as you can find. The Freelang.com website will be useful in your research.

Can you find any other words that have 'God' in them, or 'Until we meet again'? .

 http://www.freelang.net/expressions/goodbye.html
Danish
Others
Farvel
?

For one expression - like "goodbye", this web site Freelang.net gave the students the equivalent in a whole list of languages.

Click on the picture to link to the web site.

Find out about other words....
The Freelang.net web site has a growing number of expressions in its list.

Here are some of the words you can look up in the list:

  • I love you
  • Welcome
  • Hello
  • Good bye
  • Thank you
  • Yes
  • No
  • Happy birthday
  • Merry Christmas
  • Happy new year
  • Congratulations
  • Peace

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Extra words and fashions

Language is always changing. There are fashions in what you say just as much as with clothes and music.

One generation said goodbye with "See you later, alligator!" - to which the other person replied, "In a while, crocodile!". A few years later, that might sound old-fashioned, but you do hear people say "See ya!" and "Later!"

What do people say in YOUR community?

Language evolves as people choose how to speak it. Other languages - like French - also belong to the people who communicate with them.

Just like in English, some ways of saying 'goodbye' in French might sound to a French person either "OK - cool" or "a bit strange" or "that's old-fashioned, no-one says that now", or even "I don't understand what they mean"

Here are some other French ways of saying "goodbye" for different people. If you have an exchange link with someone in France, see if you can find more:

"Ciao" - informal goodbye to a friend

"Bon nuit" - good night (off to bed)

"Bonne journée" - have a nice day!

"Bonne soirée" - have a good evening

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