À l’agence bancaire, je demande : « Comment allez-vous ? »

Because agence starts with a vowel sound, so la becomes l’. This is called elision.

• à + la agence → not allowed
• à l’agence → correct

So the full phrase is à l’agence bancaire.

Agence means an office or branch, and bancaire means banking-related or bank-related.

So agence bancaire means bank branch or bank office.

A learner should also know that in everyday speech, French speakers often just say à la banque or dans une agence bancaire, depending on context.

Bancaire is an adjective describing agence.

• agence = noun
• bancaire = adjective

It stays bancaire here because the singular feminine form is also bancaire. Some adjectives change visibly, but this one does not.

So:

• une agence bancaire
• des agences bancaires

The phrase À l’agence bancaire sets the scene: it tells you where the action happens.

The comma separates this introductory phrase from the main clause:

• À l’agence bancaire, je demande...

This is similar to English sentences like:

• At the bank, I ask...

The comma is not always absolutely necessary in short French sentences, but it is very natural here.

Yes, demander can mean to ask or to request, depending on context.

In this sentence, je demande means I ask.

French uses demander where English often uses ask:

• Je demande : ... = I ask: ...

Be careful: demander does not mean demand in the English sense most of the time. That is a very common false friend.

The colon introduces what is being said directly.

So:

• je demande : means I ask:
• then the exact words follow

This works much like English punctuation when introducing direct speech.

Those are the standard French quotation marks, called guillemets.

French typically writes direct speech like this:

• « Comment allez-vous ? »

English usually uses “ ”, but French normally prefers « ».

You may also notice spacing around them in carefully typeset French.

Comment allez-vous ? uses inversion, which is a standard and correct way to form a question in French.

Structure:

• allez-vous = are you going / are you doing

In formal or careful French, inversion is very common in questions, especially in fixed expressions like this one.

Comment vous allez ? is not the normal standard form here. If you want a less formal spoken version, French would usually use something like:

• Vous allez comment ?
  or, much more naturally,
• Ça va ?
• Comment ça va ?

But as a polite greeting, Comment allez-vous ? is the classic form.

Vous is used for:

1. one person in a formal or polite situation
2. more than one person

At a bank, you would normally use vous because it is a professional, polite setting.

If you were talking to a friend, you might say:

• Comment vas-tu ?

But at a bank:

• Comment allez-vous ? is much more appropriate

Yes. It is polite and fairly formal.

French has several ways to ask How are you?, with different levels of formality:

• Comment allez-vous ? → polite/formal
• Comment vas-tu ? → informal, singular
• Comment ça va ? → common, neutral
• Ça va ? → very common and casual

So in a bank, Comment allez-vous ? sounds respectful.

Usually it functions more like a greeting, just like English How are you?

It can be a genuine question, but in many situations it is simply polite social language. A short answer is normal, for example:

• Très bien, merci. Et vous ?
• Bien, merci.

So learners should understand that it is often not asking for a long, detailed answer.

A simple approximate pronunciation is:

• koh-mahn tah-lay voo

A few useful points:

• Comment has a nasal vowel at the end
• allez sounds like ah-lay
• there is a liaison between allez and vous, so the z is pronounced:
  • allez-vous → sounds like ah-lay-z voo

That liaison is important in careful speech.

French typography normally puts a space before certain punctuation marks, especially:

• :
• ;
• ?
• !

So je demande : and allez-vous ? are written correctly in French style.

In professional typesetting, this is often a special narrow or non-breaking space, but for learners, the main thing is simply to notice that French punctuation spacing is different from English.