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Richard Harrison's comment here reminded me that when I started learning French (with any seriousness), I could never work out when to use bon and when to use bien.

In the end – as with a great deal of my French – I intuited it, which means I'm still incapable of explaining why I use one or the other.

Is it as simple as good and well?

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Bon = adjective, bien = adverb. (plus a couple expressions, idioms and set locutions...) – Dave Aug 24 '11 at 3:01
Je dirais comme Dave, mais du coup l'expression "Il est bien, ce garçon" devrait être incorrecte. – Joubarc Aug 24 '11 at 7:25
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@Joubarc: comme je disais, il y a pas mal d'expressions et idiomes qui sortent de cette définition grammaticale ("bien" comme adjectif, "bon" comme incise/interjection etc.). Mais ça couvre quand même 90% des cas... – Dave Aug 25 '11 at 0:01

1 Answer

up vote 11 down vote accepted

Well is definitively bien.

Good is bon in “Ce gâteau est bon”, “Je suis bon”.

But good is bien or bon in “This is good!” (bon: this taste good, this is cool, bien: this is cool, nice)

This site gives a table of possible meanings depending of the use.

            Bon     Bien    Mauvais    Mal
adjective   good    well    bad        wrong
adverb      nice    well    bad        badly
noun        form    good(s) bad part   evil

Another page on this site gives examples of uses.

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Bon (well), je suis un peu fatigué maintenant, mais c'est plus compliqué que ça. – Gilles♦ Aug 23 '11 at 22:42
Quelqu'un de bien. Bien fait pour toi. Il est bon/il est bien. – Benjol Aug 24 '11 at 4:40
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@Benjol: bon vu! – Joubarc Aug 24 '11 at 14:12
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@Joubarc: charrie pas les lecteurs anglophones... Y vont plus rien comprendre. Pour les lecteurs FLE, l'expression courante c'est "bien vu". – boisvert Mar 28 '12 at 12:09
@Gilles : Would you mind expanding on that comment sometime ? – Nikana Reklawyks Nov 17 '12 at 22:24

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