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French Language Lessons: Making Dinner Reservations

Steve Cohen

This section presents the essentials of making a restaurant reservation by phone. The idea of conducting business on the phone in French may seem intimidating, but remember:

reserving in advance, even the same day, may make the difference between getting a table or not, especially in the more popular restaurants, and
hand gestures aren't very helpful with this one, so it isn't really much harder on the phone than in person.

You can listen to the lesson.

Notes on Pronunciation

French words tend to be accented lightly on the last syllable or the last syllable of a group of words. In rare instances for emphasis or where this is not the case, an accented syllable will be indicated by ALL CAPS. Liaisons are indicated by red, italicized initial consonants (e.g. "Puis-je vous aider?" pronounced as "pwee-zhuh voo zeh-day"). See Guide to Transliteration for more information.

Reservations Vocabulary

ENGLISH	FRENCH	SAY IT LIKE THIS
to make a reservation	faire une réservation	fehr ewn ray-zehr-vah-SYOH
at what time?	à quelle heure?	ah kehl uhr?
(your) name	(votre) nom	(vohtr) noh
how many	combien	koh-BYA
for	pour	poor
this evening	ce soir	suh swahr
tomorrow evening	demain soir	duh-MA swahr
half past seven o'clock*	dix-neuf heures et demi	deez-nuhv uhr ay duh-MEE
eight o'clock	vingt heures	van tuhr
half past eight	vingt heures et demi	van tuhr ay duh-MEE
OK, agreed	d'accord	dah-KOHR

* Remember, France uses the 24 hour clock, so 7pm is 19:00.

Listen to a Sample Dialog

Here is a sample dialog. You are calling the "Restaurant le Jardin" to make a dinner reservation for two people the same evening at 8 pm.

Download MP3 soundtrack: fr_phoneres.mp3 (1.10mb)
Click on the link to play the sound file (it takes a few minutes to download). Right click to download the file to save on your computer.