French Word du Jour 2 Dec 2016

Bienvenue = welcome

pronunciation {be-aw-va-noo}

Language detective
(It is sometimes helpful in understanding French to look at the real meaning of all the parts of the word or phrase.)

Bienvenue seems to be made up of a few familiar words

bien = good

venue =  arrival

You might recognize ‘venue’ from such English/French words as ‘Avenue’, which means pretty much the same thing in both languages. An Avenue is a road either for people or cars (or horses, because they wouldn’t have had cars when the word avenue was first coined.)

One might say a traveler ‘arrives’ on an avenue or road. And one might greet that traveler by saying “Good arrival” = Bienvenue.