"À bientôt !"
Translation:See you soon!
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There are many casual phrases that one can say upon saying goodbye to someone. In one sense, they are not to be taken literally. "See you soon" does not necessarily mean it's going to be very soon. "See you later" does not necessarily mean that you will see them later the same day, but only sometime later. The casual remark made when greeting someone is "How are you?" You really don't expect the person to tell you how everything is going with them. It is a polite and natural thing to do among friends. It is referred to as meta-talk. The other sense is that when you are learning French, you will need to take hold of the idea that "bonjour" is "hello" and while one might be thinking "hi there", "hey buddy", "howdy", and a myriad of other such casual expressions, you need to translate it as "hello". The same for à bientôt = see you soon, à plus tard = see you later, à demain = see you tomorrow, etc., at least while you are doing the Duolingo exercises. In casual conversations among your friends, you may be much more loose about how you translate it.
Hi, Perce_Neige (I know you know this already, but this is for the others reading the comments). There are many phrases that may be said upon parting company. When learning the French expressions, be aware that there are different terms in English, just as there are in French (even though their meanings may be relatively similar). While they are all somewhat equivalent in the sense of "so long", "see you later", and "bye" being something that one might say, it is important to know the difference.
- à bientôt = see you soon
- à plus tard = see you later
- à demain = see you tomorrow
- salut (hi/hey/hello) -informal- said upon greeting; (bye/so long) said upon leaving
- bonjour = good morning/good afternoon/hello
- au revoir = goodbye (not good bye, good by, or good-bye, or bye-bye)
Since these terms are idiomatic in English, they are not fully grammatical sentences. I.e., there is no "We will see you soon" or "I will see you soon"; it's just "See you soon!" It isn't that you can't say "we will" or "I will", but simply that it is not usually said that way. The small 'word' à is used in many ways: one of them is with expressions of parting. As such, WordReference suggests that it be treated as "see you..." when referencing a future meeting, and not literally translated as "to" or "until". Please see: http://www.wordreference.com/fren/%C3%A0
This is old but if anybody else new wants to know about stuff like this, you can probably use some of your lingots to test yourself on idioms. I haven't done it yet but things like this might show up. It's worth a try + idioms should be useful for everyday speech n yeah it's also just another nice thing to study even if you don't get what you wanted.
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There's an older practice of not putting accents on capital letters though, in fact my textbook in high school advocated it. It's not done here but if seen elsewhere it could cause confusion.
I have found a good explanation that "À bientôt" is used as an official and polite phrase, when you don’t know will you meet or not; "À la prochaine" is used for friends, when you know that you definitely will meet and there is no need to make an appointment. Then, "À plus tard" is used when you’re sure or it’s very likely that you will meet again on the same day (or evening), but the time and conditions are not necessarily agreed. And "À tout à l'heure" refers to some particular moment (agreement or timetable, or in the end of the phone call before arrival). Please correct me if it’s wrong ☺
Accents are not necessary when letters are capital because it is not that easy to type something like À when we use computer. However it is recommended not to ignore them when we write because the accents do be useful in distinguishing the meaning of words. Hope it would be helpful and do forgive my poor English, I am not a native English speaker.
I know it's functionally useless, but does anyone know what the etymology behind "bientôt" is? What its most literal translation could be?
"Good__?"
Is "tôt" some kind of bastardization of the word "temps"?
As in, "To good times", or maybe even "In good time"?
There are several types of accents:
- acute accent = é
- grave accent = è - à - ù
- circumflex accent = â - ê - î - ô - û
- umlaut (le tréma) = ë - ü
In most cases, a circumflex accent above a letter shows that in old French or Latin, the word had an -s: "une fenêtre" used to be "fenestre"; "bientôt" has derived from late Latin "tostum"
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See the above comments. Capital A at the beginning of a sentence is equivalent to à (ie:accent grave) which is idiomatic for "see you" in this context. "a" no accent, would be "has". A or "à" is "see you" when used before bientôt. At least that is my understanding.
What about "see you later?" That's what I wrote and it said I was wrong. ??
Well I understand the literal meaning of 'bientot' and 'plus tard', but functionally, their meaning aren't very different. And colloquially, their meanings aren't very different either. Like when people part, they say "see you around", "see you later", "later", and "see you soon" all as meaning "bye".
Hi mbropleh, here you are not in the real life, if you change the words you do an error. Howewer in the colloquial language in English they have maybe the same meaning, not so in French, if you say à bientot(=see you soon) you don't know when you will rewiew , by à plus tard(=see you later) you are going to see again you in the same day, a few hours or also less. Bye!
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