Il mange la salade au supermarché et se fait griller
B1 French listening practice · French · Curated for intermediate learners
What does “rayon” mean in a French supermarket?
In a French shop un rayon is an aisle or a department: le rayon boulangerie, le rayon frais. Staff say j’étais en rayon for “I was out on the shop floor,” and un chef de rayon is a department manager. It is the very same word as a ray of sunlight and a spoke of a wheel — all of them things radiating outwards from a centre.
Elsewhere: un rayon de soleil (a sunbeam), les rayons X (X-rays), dans un rayon de dix kilomètres (“within a ten-kilometre radius”), and the idiom ce n’est pas mon rayon — “that’s not my department,” used far outside actual shops. The clip opens with an employee reporting exactly the retail sense: j’étais en rayon et y a ce monsieur qui teste les salades.
Vocabulary frequency
How common is the vocabulary in this B1 French listening practice listening practice?
General French frequency
Spoken French frequency
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · Lexique 3.83 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.