Business Meeting Phrases: Japanese, French and Spanish Compared

Phrasebooks cover hotels, restaurants and taxis, and then stop. Almost none of them prepare you for the five minutes before a business meeting actually starts — the handshake or card exchange, the decision about how formal to be, the small talk that either happens or doesn’t. That’s the part that actually determines how the meeting goes, and it works on genuinely different rules in Japan, France and Spain.

The opening exchange

	First words	Handing over a card	”Looking forward to working together”
Japanese	田中と申します (Tanaka to moushimasu) — “I’m Tanaka”	名刺を頂戴できますか (Meishi wo choudai dekimasu ka?) — “May I have your card?”	どうぞよろしくお願いいたします (Douzo yoroshiku onegai itashimasu)
French	Enchanté, je m’appelle Marie Dubois	Voici ma carte de visite	Ravie de travailler avec vous
Spanish	Mucho gusto, soy Ana Torres	¿Me da su tarjeta?	Encantada de trabajar con usted

The Japanese column does more work per line than the other two, and the third phrase is the one worth stopping on. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu gets flattened in every phrasebook into “nice to meet you,” said once at the start and forgotten. It isn’t that. It’s closer to “I’m counting on your goodwill going forward,” and a Japanese businessperson says a version of it again at the end of the same meeting, in the follow-up email, and at the start of the actual project. Learning it as a one-time introduction line means missing the three or four other moments it’s supposed to show up.

The card ritual that isn’t optional

Meishi koukan — the business card exchange — is the one piece of Japanese business etiquette that has no French or Spanish equivalent, because it’s solving a problem neither of those languages has: Japanese has no single pronoun-based formality switch like tu/vous or tú/usted, so politeness is carried entirely in verb endings and honorific vocabulary, and getting the register right requires knowing exactly who outranks whom. The card supplies that information instantly — title, company, department — which is why the ritual around it is so fixed: offer your card with both hands, text facing the recipient, give a small bow; receive theirs the same way, read it before putting it down, and leave it visible on the table in front of you for the length of the meeting, arranged in the same seating order as the people who gave them. Writing on someone’s card, pocketing it immediately, or sliding it across a table one-handed all register the same way: as skipping the part of the introduction that actually mattered.

Vous stays vous

French business formality has a simpler rule than its reputation suggests: vous is the default with any colleague, client or counterpart you didn’t already know socially, and it stays that way for the life of the working relationship unless the other person explicitly proposes tutoyer — a real, sometimes slightly awkward moment (“On peut se tutoyer ?”), not something that happens by default after a few friendly meetings. This is different from French small talk, where tu can arrive faster between peers close in age. In a business room, rank and context reset the clock. Je vous présente notre directeur commercial (“Let me introduce our sales director”) keeps vous even introducing your own colleague; dropping to tu on your own initiative, even with someone you’ve emailed for a year, reads as presumptuous rather than warm.

Usted, but which usted

Spanish splits on geography more than on any fixed business rule. In Mexico City, Bogotá or Lima, usted in a first meeting is close to mandatory and can persist for years even after real familiarity develops — it’s a marker of respect for hierarchy, not distance. In Madrid or Barcelona, especially in tech and younger companies, tú now shows up from the first handshake between people of similar seniority, a genuine shift from a generation ago. Neither is more “correct” Spanish; a traveler who defaults to formal usted everywhere will sound stiff in a Madrid startup and exactly right in a Bogotá boardroom. Le presento a nuestro director de ventas signals the Latin American default; te presento a signals the newer Spanish one — mirroring whichever register your counterpart opens with is the safer move than guessing.

What actually happens before anyone mentions business

The three cultures don’t just differ in formality — they differ in how long the room waits before getting to the agenda. French meetings allow a genuine but brief pleasantry (the trip, the weather, “Vous avez trouvé facilement ?”) before pivoting, usually within a minute. Spanish and Latin American meetings run longer — a few minutes touching on the visit, the city, sometimes a shared contact — and cutting it short can read as cold rather than efficient. Japanese meetings extend it furthest: an unhurried opening about the trip, the weather, thanks for the host’s time (Honjitsu wa ojikan wo itadaki, arigatou gozaimasu — “thank you for taking the time today”) is expected before the agenda comes up, and rushing it is read as impatience with the relationship, not respect for everyone’s schedule.