When you learn French at school you are or I was taught things like Bonjour, comment allez vous? Zut Alors, comment t'appelle tu? etc When living in France these phrases, save for Bonjour, are not used that commonly. So here are a list of greetings you usually hear in France: Salut. - Hi Coucou - Hey Bonjour - Good Day Bonsoir - Good Evening Ciao - Bye Au revoir - bye Bonne soirée - Have a Nice Evening Bonne journée - Have a Nice Day You can see how most of these greetings work for example bon jour - the word bon is good and the word jour is day. Bonne Soirée again bonne is good (feminine) and Soirée is evening you might go out to a Soirée for example. Although most of us would associate Ciao as being Italien it is used a lot here in France as well. Once you have mastered the greetings next comes the phrases to ask how people are. Just like in English you would normally say Hi, how are you? In French it is no different! So after you have said Bonjour or salut you would normally follow up with a ça va. The ça va is said with an intonation to suggest a question. The normal response would be ça va bien et toi (vous - depending on how well you know the person). Let's break that down: ça - means that. va - go - from the verb aller. bien - well et - and toi - you (informal and singular) vous - you (formal or plural) oui - yes comment - How Earlier I mentioned comment allez-vous - which means how goes you - as a literal translation. So in turn you are really saying how's it going. So when you say ça va you are literally saying that goes. Now if we add 'comment' to that so, comment ça va - you are saying how that goes. So in turn you are saying how's that going. Conclusion: So basically say Bonjour, ça va? and most people will respond with either 'oui, ça va' / 'ça va bien' if you want to add comment or use allez-vous there is nothing with that either it just takes longer! Hope this is helpful. à bientôt Ciao