A white Paris street sign on a post, reading Avenue des Champs-Elysees, 8th arrondissement, photographed from below

01

Your first month

Tick a line when it is done

02

How French works

A French sentence runs in the same order as an English one (subject, verb, object) until a pronoun gets involved, and then "I see him" becomes "I him see". Every noun is masculine or feminine, and its article and adjectives change to match, so the gender has to be learned with the word. Most adjectives come after the noun. Verbs change their ending for each person, and although the spellings differ, three or four of the six present-tense forms usually sound identical. The everyday past tense is built from two pieces, a helper verb plus a participle, much like "I have eaten". There are two words for "you": one for friends, family and children, one for strangers, elders and groups, and picking the right one is part of being polite. Negatives wrap the verb in two words on paper, and speakers routinely drop the first one. The numbers hold a surprise: in France seventy is "sixty-ten" and ninety-nine is "four-twenty-ten-nine".

03

Sounds, spelling and the gap between them

Final consonants are usually silent.

"Petit", "vous" and "grand" all end on a vowel sound. The common exceptions are c, r, f and l, the consonants in the English word "careful".

Liaison brings a silent final letter back to life before a vowel.

"Les" ends silent on its own, but "les amis" is said as one run with a z sound in the middle. This is why spoken words seem to have no edges.

Nasal vowels are new. In "vin", "blanc" and "bon" the n is not pronounced

It tells you to send the vowel through your nose.

French has two u sounds that English hears as one.

"Tout" (all) is the "oo" you know. "Tu" (you) is made by saying "ee" with your lips rounded tight.

The r comes from the back of the throat, close to a soft gargle.

It does not need to be perfect to be understood, so do not let it hold up your speaking.

Stress falls lightly on the last syllable of each phrase, and every syllable gets about the same length.

English rhythm, with its strong and weak beats, is the most audible part of an accent.

Spelling is more regular than it looks, in one direction.

Once you know the letter patterns you can pronounce nearly any written word correctly. Going from sound to spelling is harder, since several spellings share each sound.

The accent marks are not decoration.

An acute or grave accent on an e changes its sound, the cedilla makes a c soft, and a few pairs of words differ only by an accent.

Free pronunciation lessons and recordings

A blue enamel street plaque on a pale stone wall in Paris, reading Rue Saint-Louis en l'Ile, 4th arrondissement — A Paris street plaque

A Paris street corner with navy awnings, one lettered for a cafe and one for a boulangerie, under stone balconies

04

Where French can take you

Open one to see where to start

Travel FrenchEnough to greet, order, ask the way and be polite about it. A few weeks of set phrases changes a trip, in France and in Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland and much of West and North Africa.

Start here

Learn the dozen things you will say every day of a trip: hello, please, thank you, excuse me, I would like, the check, where is, how much, and do you speak English. Practice saying hello before anything else, since opening with it is what gets you a friendly answer.

DELF PrepThe official French diploma comes in four levels, is awarded by France's education ministry and never expires. The lowest level tests listening, reading, writing and a short spoken interview, and gives a first-year learner a clear target and a date.

Start here

Download the free sample paper for the lowest level and try the listening section with its audio. Mark every question you missed and make those words your first flashcards.

France Éducation International: DELF

Reading FrenchShort stories written for learners first, then books with French and English on facing pages. The shared vocabulary makes reading the fastest skill to grow, and it is where new words stop being flashcards.

Start here

Read one short beginner text tonight with its translation beside it. Read the French first, guess from the words that look like English, then check yourself and read the French again.

Lawless French: Reading

PronunciationTreating the sound system as a project of its own, with daily listen-and-repeat drills and recordings of your own voice. It suits anyone who wants to be understood the first time.

Start here

Record yourself reading four lines of a beginner dialogue, then play the original and your version back to back. Pick the one sound that is furthest off and drill only that one this week.

Lawless French: Pronunciation

Film and TVFrench cinema, series, podcasts and songs as daily listening practice. Real speech is faster and more clipped than a coursebook, so use it to train your ear and take your own phrasing from your lessons.

Start here

Pick one French series or film you already know in English and watch a five-minute scene three times: once with English subtitles, once with French subtitles, once with none. Write down three phrases you caught by ear.

ConversationRegular talk with a tutor or an exchange partner. Because so much vocabulary carries over from English, a beginner can hold a slow, real conversation within a few months.

Start here

Install a free language exchange app this week and send one voice message in French: your name, where you live and that you have just started. Ask your partner to correct one thing.

HelloTalk

The exam body and easy news

05

What trips beginners up

What to expect, and the habits to drop

Expect to read far better than you hear. Print shows you the word boundaries and the familiar spellings, and speech removes both. Only hours of listening close that gap.
Expect about 750 class hours to reach professional working level. US government language trainers put French in their quickest group for English speakers, which still means a year or two of steady study.
Expect some words to mislead you. "Librairie" is a bookstore, "actuellement" means currently, and "attendre" is to wait. Look up a look-alike before you trust it.
Do not learn from text alone. Hear every new word before you say it, or you will build a private pronunciation that has to be unlearned.
Do not skip the genders with a plan to add them later. Going back to attach an article to a thousand nouns is far harder than learning each pair once.
Do not wait until you feel ready to speak. Say your lessons aloud from the first day and book a real conversation in the first month.
Do not stack three apps and two textbooks. Pick one main course and finish it before you judge it.

A pale green shop window set in a stone wall in France, lettered in white French script, with sweets on display — A shop window lettered in French

06

Where to learn and look things up

A free online dictionary is the tool you will open every day. A good one shows example sentences and whether a noun is masculine or feminine.
A free online conjugator shows every form of any verb. Use it to check an ending, then close it and write the sentence yourself.
A free grammar site with one short page per topic answers most "why is it spelled that way" questions faster than a textbook index.
Street-interview videos with French and English subtitles together show how people actually talk, at full speed, with the text to fall back on.
A podcast in slow, clear French with a transcript is the bridge between coursebook audio and real radio.
A spaced-repetition flashcard app schedules your reviews. Make cards from your own coursebook rather than downloading a deck of 5,000 words.
An online tutor for 30 minutes a week gives you someone to answer out loud. Community tutors on lesson marketplaces often charge less than a restaurant lunch.
A local chapter of the French cultural network runs in-person classes and conversation groups in most large US cities, and many chapters host the diploma exams.
A learner forum is the place to ask why a sentence uses one past tense and not the other.

Dictionary, verbs, grammar, listening and people to talk to

A painted green tile mural advertising a boulangerie, with a street scene in an oval frame and a French caption on a ribbon — A tiled bakery sign

07

About the kit

Everything you need to begin is free, so nothing here is marked essential. The two recommended lines are the things free apps do worst: a coursebook that teaches grammar in an order that builds, with recorded dialogues to copy, and a workbook that makes you write out genders, endings and word order until they stop being guesses. Everything after that depends on where you are heading. The travel, exam, reading and pronunciation add-ons match the directions above, and each can wait until you know you want it. The verb reference at the end is for later, once you are writing your own sentences in more than one tense.

A shelf of old leather-bound French books, their titles and volume numbers stamped in gold on the spines — French books on a shelf

08

Place your order

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the cart. Clicking a card selects it there. The coursebook and the grammar workbook start in the order. The travel, exam, reading and pronunciation books stay out until you switch them on in section 04 or with the chips in the cart, and the verb reference stays out until you add it.

Beginner French coursebook

recommended · Course

This is the course itself: dialogues, vocabulary, grammar notes and exercises in an order that builds, with recordings of every dialogue. It is what turns scattered app phrases into sentences you can make yourself.

budget

French in 3 Months with Free Audio App: Your Essential Guide to Understanding and Speaking French (DK Hugo in 3 Months Language Learning Courses)

4.4(212)

$11.30

Learning French

Your first month

How French works

Sounds, spelling and the gap between them

Where French can take you

What trips beginners up

Where to learn and look things up

About the kit

Place your order

Beginner French coursebook

French grammar workbook

French travel phrasebook

DELF A1 preparation book

French short stories for beginners

French-English dual-language book

French pronunciation book

French verb conjugation reference