Are you ready to learn all the things you want to know about the basic French sentence "Bien au contraire"? Including a detailed guide of what it is and how to use it in a casual conversation with an audio example. Not to mention the cool stuff we added like dialogue example, slow pronunciation audio, synonyms and more!
Translation : Quite the contrary
Register : Formal - Basic
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IPA : / bjɛ̃ o kɔ̃tʁɛʁ /
This formal interjection is very useful if you need to deny a statement and claim the exact opposite. It's translated as "Quite the contrary".
Let's see how you can use it through examples:
Someone asks you if you are anxious, then you might say: "Bien au contraire" (Quite the contrary). This implies that you are actually relaxed and not anxious.
Now if you want to make it more clear, you can justify why it's not true right after, in our example it would be: "Bien au contraire, je suis détendu(e)" (Quite the contrary, I'm relaxed)
"Au contraire" also exists in English, and even better, they have a rhyme with it: "Au contraire mon frère" (On the contrary my brother).
But we don't use the last version in French... except if talking to our brother. Which doesn't even need to be the case in English, because it's just for the pun and the rhyme.
↓ Example in a story with French audio ↓
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