Professional Meetings & Presentations

Softening assertions with the conditionnel

Professional French relies heavily on the conditionnel présent (introduced back at B1) to soften assertions and requests in meetings — je voudrais, il conviendrait de, on pourrait — a near word-for-word parallel to English professional softening ('I would like to,' 'could we,' 'it might be worth'), so the underlying instinct transfers directly. French leans on this conditionnel softening even more consistently in professional registers than English does, though, so dropping straight into the présent indicatif (je veux, il faut) can land as more commanding or blunt in French than the equivalent 'I want/we must' would in English.