What is "Mia C'bon"?

Question

There's a supermarket named "Mia C'bon". The company expanded "Mia" is Italian and "C'bon" is French. However my French teacher said C'bon was not French. I get confused. So what is exactly the language of "C'bon"? And what's "C" stand for? Thank you!

Answer 1

French words often appear with contractions, both written and spoken. "C'bon" is a contraction of "C'est" ("it is" in English) and "bon" ("good" / "tasty" in English).

"C" is often used as shorthand for "c'est" because they're pronounced the same: /se/

Using proper spelling it should be "c'est bon".

Answer 2

Various companies include C' Bon in their brand names including a Japanese cosmetics one since 1966, a Meal delivery one based in Montréal, Québec founded in 2008 (but written without the apostrophe), and, in 2008 too, a an chain of supermarkets specialized in organic products, Bio c' Bon. After going bankrupt, it was bought by the retail group Carrefour who kept the Bio c' Bon stores name. Carrefour Taiwan later decided to reuse the C' Bon part to rename an acquired chain of supermarkets, "Jasons", because the right to use that name was expiring. Mia evokes the Taiwanese word for "thing" and sounds European too. The space after C' wasn't kept and bon was written in lowercase.

Here is an article from the China Times, 29 April 2022 (translated by google) that explain this choice (bold is mine):

After Carrefour acquired the supermarket JASONS the year before last, the brand license expired at the end of this year. After a year of research and research, it decided to create a new brand "Mia C'bon", covering more than 82 countries and more than 10,000 kinds of imported products, and hired a "virtual store manager" robot for the first time Recommended selections in the shuttle store; the first store is located on Tianmu West Road, Taipei.

Carrefour will acquire Dairy Farm Group’s entire shares in Taiwan’s Wellcome Department Store in 2020, including 199 Dinghao supermarkets and 25 JASONS supermarkets; the authorization of the JASONS brand will expire at the end of this year. Wang Junchao, general manager of Carrefour Taiwan, revealed at the beginning of the year that it will change its name and launch a new store. brand, moving in the direction of "better than high-end supermarkets".

Now the new name is released, called "Mia C'bon", the first store is located on Tianmu West Road, Taipei, and will officially debut tomorrow; the name design of Mia C'bon, after many internal discussions, the pronunciation of "Mia" is similar to the Taiwanese "things", instantly shortening the distance with Taiwanese consumers; Mia C'bon is also of European descent, "Mia" is Italian and Spanish, meaning "mine", and "C'bon" is French. The meaning of "beautiful and delicious" symbolizes that Mia C'bon is a supermarket with both local and international flavors.

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C'bon is not correct French, as your teacher rightly said, but it is nevertheless understandable. It is a softened mixup version of the SMS language where the sentence C'est bon (it is good) can be written c bon where the C is not an abbreviation of Ce or C'est but used phonetically, the letter being pronounced as is. A similar play of words exists in English where C Shell is pronounced like Sea-shell.

Answer 3

Strictement parlant, en français, "c'bon" se prononce /sbɔ̃/, et non /sebɔ̃/, et c'est tout simplement inusité en tant que contraction. Dans un message texte, on pourrait facilement avoir "c bon" (avec un espace entre les deux) comme raccourci pour "c'est bon".

Les entreprises aiment créer des marques en utilisant des jeux de mots et le français est souvent utilisé pour les mettre en valeur, et ceci n'en est qu'un exemple pitoyable à mon avis. Il existe également une marque Bio c' Bon, qui parvient à conserver cet espace (entre "c'" et "bon") et reflète quelque chose qui, à mon sens, est plus conforme à la langue, ne serait-ce que parce que cela interdit de le prononcer /sbɔ̃/ suggérant plutôt un remplacement de plusieurs caractères pour "c'est".

Enfin, je suppose que l'apostrophe est plus typique en français écrit pour représenter l'élision que pour remplacer plusieurs lettres ; ce qui ajoute au sentiment général que ces noms de marque sont bizarres quand on les lit, à mon avis.

Au mieux, "c'bon" peut représenter "cébon" ou "c'estbon" (sans espace), aucun des deux n'étant un mot ou locution valide en français ; ce n'est pas une contraction de "c'est bon", à moins de mettre complètement de côté comment fonctionne cette langue. Cela rappelle la façon dont certains noms de famille sont prononcés en anglais, comme D'Angelo (d-Angelo) ou O'Toole (o-toole) ; cela ne fonctionne pas en français.

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Ton professeur de français avait parfaitement raison, ce n'est pas du français, mais ça y ressemble.

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From a strict point of view, in French "c'bon" is pronounced /sbɔ̃/, not /sebɔ̃/, and it's just unnatural as a contraction. In a text message you could easily have "c bon" (with a space in between) as a shorthand for "c'est bon".

Businesses like to create brands using play on words and French is often used to elevate these, and this is just a pitiful example of that imho. There's also a Bio c’ Bon brand, which manages to keep that space (between "c'" and "bon") and reflects something which to me is more in line with the language, if only because this prohibits pronouncing it /sbɔ̃/ by preempting it with multiple character replacement for "c'est".

Finally, I speculate the apostrophe is more typical in written French as a means of representing elision than it is at replacing multiple letters; adding to the overall feeling such brand names are weird when you read them imho.

At best "c'bon" can stand for "cébon" or "c'estbon" (with no space), neither of which being a valid French word/phrase; it is not a contraction of "c'est bon" unless you completely ignore how this language works. It is reminiscent of how some surnames are pronounced in English such as D'Angelo (d-Angelo) or O'Toole (o-toole); this doesn't work in French.

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Your French teacher is absolutely right, it isn't, it just looks like it is.