The French expression "À bientôt" explained

Ready to find out everything you want to know about the basic French phrase “À bientôt”?

It includes a full explanation of what it is and how to use it in a dialogue with an audio example. And because we want you to make progress in French, we also added some super useful stuff like synonyms, dialogue example, slow pronunciation audio and more!

Oh and in case you are interested, you will find our others phrases explained on this page plus the directory of all our French words pages on this page. Wishing you a good learning!

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French to English

Pronunciation

Slow pronunciation

Normal pronunciation

What does à bientôt mean?

Definition

“À bientôt” is the French way to say “See you soon“.

It’s useful when you don’t know exactly when you will see the person again. If it’s not the case, other expressions are more appropriate. More on that in the next section…

How to use

Every time you are leaving someone, you have to think of when will be the next time you will see this person again. The answer to this question will affect how to say goodbye.

If the next time you will see the person is not defined, you can use:

And here are the ones you can use if you know when you will see the person again:

  • À tout de suite / À toute / Je reviens tout de suite → 1 to 30 minutes*
  • À tout à l’heure / À toute / Je reviens → 30 minutes to later today*
  • À ce soir → This evening
  • À demain → Tomorrow
  • À lundi / mardi / mercredi… → Next Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday…
  • À la semaine prochaine → Next week

*The time frames aren’t fixed, but being too far from it might cause some misunderstandings.

Synonyms

Example in a story with English translation

Now, let’s see a complete example of this sentence in a story with slow French audio and the English translation below.
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Voyage à Marseille
Trip to Marseille
___
Joe a décidé de quitter Paris pour quelques jours.
Joe decided to leave Paris for a few days.
Il a contacté Ellen pour savoir où elle était et s’il pouvait la rejoindre dans son voyage.
He contacted Ellen to find out where she was and if he could join her on her journey.
Elle était à Marseille, et elle était heureuse que Joe la rejoigne.
She was in Marseille, and she was happy that Joe was joining her.
Elle était arrivée là-bas la veille et n’avait pas encore eu le temps de visiter.
She had arrived there the day before and didn’t have time to visit yet.
C’était donc l’occasion parfaite !
So that was the perfect opportunity!
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