Paul dit : « Salut, Marie ! »

Dit is the he/she says form of the verb dire.

So Paul dit means Paul says or Paul is saying, depending on context. In this sentence, it introduces the words Paul says aloud.

Paul dit is the normal subject + verb order in French.

• Paul dit = standard, straightforward word order
• dit Paul = possible, but more literary or stylistic, especially after the quoted speech
• dit-il = also possible in narration, usually when the subject is il

For example, French can also write:

« Salut, Marie ! » dit Paul.

But in your sentence, Paul dit : ... is a very natural way to introduce direct speech.

The colon introduces the exact words Paul says.

French commonly uses a colon before direct speech:

Paul dit : « ... »

This is a standard way to signal that the words after it are a quotation or spoken dialogue.

French normally uses guillemets for quotations and direct speech:

• opening guillemet: «
• closing guillemet: »

So instead of English-style quotation marks, French usually writes:

« Salut, Marie ! »

That is the standard French punctuation style.

French typography usually includes spaces:

• before : ; ? and !
• just inside guillemets « »

So this is normal French formatting:

Paul dit : « Salut, Marie ! »

In high-quality typography, these are usually non-breaking spaces, but learners mainly just need to recognize that this spacing is standard in French.

Salut is an informal greeting. It usually means Hi or Hello.

It can also mean Bye in some contexts.

Use Salut with:

• friends
• family
• classmates
• people you know well

For a more formal greeting, French would usually use Bonjour.

Because Marie is the person being directly addressed.

This works the same way as in English:

• Hi, Marie!
• Salut, Marie !

The comma separates the greeting from the name of the person you are speaking to.

Because Marie is not part of the reporting clause Paul dit. She appears inside the quotation as direct address.

So the structure is:

• Paul dit = Paul says
• Salut, Marie ! = the actual words spoken to Marie

If you wanted to mention the listener outside the quote, you could say something like:

Paul dit à Marie : « Salut ! »

There, à Marie means to Marie.

A rough pronunciation is:

Pol dee : sa-lü, ma-ree !

A few useful notes:

• Paul sounds roughly like Pol
• dit sounds like dee
  The final t is silent.
• Salut sounds roughly like sa-lü
  The final t is silent.
• Marie sounds like ma-ree
• The French u sound in Salut does not exist in standard English, so it may take practice.

A more exact pronunciation in IPA is:

/pɔl di : sa.ly ma.ʁi/

Because Marie is a proper name, so it takes a capital letter, just like in English.

Also, Salut is capitalized because it is the first word of the quoted sentence.