Business French tutors, lessons & classes

Business French is the formal register used in French and francophone professional contexts, distinct from conversational French in vocabulary, syntax, and cultural codes. France is the world's seventh-largest economy by GDP and the dominant cultural force across francophone Europe, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Quebec, the Caribbean, and Pacific France. French is also one of the working languages of the European Union, UN, OECD, NATO, the Olympic movement, and dozens of multinational institutions. For executives working with French counterparts — across Paris finance, Geneva banking, Brussels EU, Montreal corporate, Casablanca regional — Business French is the language layer that separates professional credibility from struggling-along fluency.

The register first. French business communication operates on the formal vous form as the default. The shift to tu is a real social event that gets explicitly invited (on peut se tutoyer) and is far less automatic than English first-names. Even after years of working together, many French colleagues remain on vous. Initiating tu on your own reads as American-presumptuous in the same way it does in Italian or Spanish business cultures. Titles matter: Monsieur le Directeur, Madame la Présidente, Maître for lawyers and notaries, Docteur for medical doctors and PhDs in many contexts. The written register is more elaborate than English business writing. Formal letter conventions still in use include the elaborate closing formula (Je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées) which has no real English equivalent. Lessons drill these registers because mismatched register is the number-one tell that a fluent speaker hasn't actually worked in French professional contexts.

Vocabulary is the second layer. Business French carries specialized terminology built on French legal and administrative tradition. Chiffre d'affaires is revenue. Bénéfice is profit; perte is loss. Bilan is balance sheet. Comptes consolidés is consolidated accounts. PDG (Président-Directeur Général) is roughly CEO, but the role differs structurally from American CEO because of French corporate governance. RSE (Responsabilité Sociétale des Entreprises) is the French version of CSR. Comité d'entreprise and the broader conseil social et économique are works councils, mandatory representative bodies in French firms above a certain size that have no American equivalent. SIRET, SIREN, RCS, TVA intracommunautaire are administrative identifiers every French business carries. Convention collective is the sector-wide collective bargaining agreement that governs most French employment relationships. Délégué syndical, droit du travail, licenciement, plan de sauvegarde de l'emploi. French labor law has its own vocabulary that anyone managing French employees needs. None of this is taught in conversational French; all of it shows up in your first month of French professional work. For broader French foundations our 1,000 most common French words list is a useful supplement.

French business culture shapes the language. Hierarchy matters more than in American firms, especially in established industries (banking, aerospace, luxury, energy) and family firms. The relationship between titles and authority is more rigid; the PDG is expected to make decisions, not facilitate consensus. Meetings are often more structured and presentation-driven than American meetings, with less spontaneous interruption. Lunch matters: a two-hour business lunch is normal in Paris and even longer outside the capital, and refusing it reads as antisocial. The 35-hour work week, generous vacation, and protected evenings are real cultural facts that shape when and how French business gets done. French business culture also reflects the strong role of the French state in the economy: énarques (graduates of the École Nationale d'Administration, now the INSP) populate senior positions in both public and private sectors, and the public-private revolving door produces a small elite shaped by the same institutions. Our blog post on French business culture for American executives covers the social side in depth.

A few specific things American executives tend to underestimate when operating in French. The salutation matters: Monsieur Martin or Madame Dupont, not Cher Pierre on first contact. Email closings carry weight: Cordialement is the safe default, Bien cordialement warmer, Avec mes salutations more formal, and Je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur, l'expression de mes sentiments distingués for the most formal contexts (still in use in legal and senior correspondence). Conditional and subjunctive moods (je voudrais, il faudrait que, je souhaiterais) carry the politeness load that English does with "could" and "would". Using indicative everywhere sounds blunt. The French non is more direct than the American "that might be a challenge"; learning to say non directly without it landing as rude is part of the cultural skill. French business meetings can include heated debate that would feel uncomfortable in American contexts but is treated as professional engagement; not engaging is the misstep. The chiusura estiva equivalent in France is les grandes vacances. Paris empties in August and much business pauses; planning around it matters.

Between lessons, French business media is excellent. Les Échos is the canonical business newspaper (parallel to Wall Street Journal / Il Sole 24 Ore). Le Figaro Économie, La Tribune, Capital, and L'Expansion cover business at varying registers. Le Monde and Le Figaro cover business as part of broader news. BFM Business is the financial TV channel; France 24 in French covers international business. Podcasts: Sismique, Génération Do It Yourself, La Story (Les Échos), Le Code (Bloomberg Businessweek French equivalent). Books worth reading in original: Erik Orsenna for global economic prose, Thomas Piketty for political economy, Patrick Modiano for the cultural and literary side of contemporary France. The Quebec and African francophone press has its own register worth sampling if your business is in those regions. The pattern is the same as for any business-language specialty: pick the daily reading your senior counterparts consume, and join them.

The Strommen Business French roster includes native French teachers based in France (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille), Quebec, French-speaking Switzerland, and Belgium, plus longtime French-American bilinguals based in the US. Several of our Business French tutors come from non-teaching professional backgrounds: French corporate finance, EU policy, French legal practice, marketing in Paris or Geneva, and bring direct field experience alongside teaching credentials. Each tutor's bio says where they're from, their professional background, and which student profile they fit best (executive coaching, contract reading, EU policy French, Quebec business French, presentation prep). Pricing reflects experience. You can match yourself to a Parisian-finance teacher for City-of-Paris business register, a Geneva-based teacher for Swiss French banking register, a Brussels-based teacher for EU-institutional French, or a Montreal-based teacher for Quebec corporate French. For other French specialties, our Parisian French, conversational French, and DELF test preparation specialty pages cover related needs.

Lessons calibrate to your actual goal. Pre-deal Business French for an upcoming negotiation with Paris counterparts is a different curriculum from monthly maintenance for an executive whose French colleagues insist on French at meetings, which is different again from DELF Pro or DALF certification for HR-required proficiency proof. We don't run a generic Business French course. Each lesson is one-on-one, your tutor plans it around your week and your industry, and the trial is free. Existing French is a head start, not a liability. The most common adjustments for fluent speakers are register elevation (consistent vous, subjunctive, formal closings), industry vocabulary deepening (finance, legal, technical, marketing, whichever fits), and cultural calibration for the specific francophone business context you're operating in. For a head-start before lessons begin, our French course page shows the family of related programs. Or just browse the full tutor list and book a trial. Pick a tutor with field experience in your industry. Put in the hours. The French is mostly there; this is calibration to the working register.