Learn French for Travel, Work and Study

French is written in the Latin alphabet with accents that mostly mark the sound of a vowel — é, è, ê, à, ç — and its spelling is historical rather than phonetic: final consonants are usually silent, many plural and verb endings are written but not pronounced, and a single sound can be spelled several ways. The reward is that the rules, once learned, are consistent, and a learner reads French correctly long before they can spell it. The sounds that mark the language are four nasal vowels — in “vin”, “vent”, “bon”, “un” — the uvular “r”, a “u” made with rounded lips that English lacks, and liaison, which carries a silent final consonant across to the next word so that “les amis” is said “lez-ami”.

The grammar is Romance: two genders, with the article and the adjective agreeing with the noun; verbs conjugated for six persons across a dozen tenses, of which four do nearly all the work in speech; a past tense for finished events and another for background; and a subjunctive that survives in everyday use after certain verbs. The gender of a noun must be learned with it, since endings are only a rough guide, and adjectives usually follow their nouns. Word order is close to English, and the hardest habit for learners is the small pronouns that cluster before the verb — “je te le donne”, I give it to you.

French has a polite “vous” and an informal “tu”, and the choice carries weight. “Vous” is for strangers, officials, shopkeepers, colleagues one does not know well and anyone older; “tu” for family, friends, children and, by invitation, colleagues. The invitation — “on peut se tutoyer” — comes from the senior or older person. Titles are “Monsieur” and “Madame” without the surname, used far more than in English: to a shopkeeper, a waiter, a stranger in the street. Every exchange opens with “bonjour” and closes with “merci, au revoir”; a request without the greeting marks the speaker as a tourist at best.

The French of Paris is the standard taught everywhere, and the French-speaking world speaks around it. Belgium and Switzerland say “septante” and “nonante” where France counts “soixante-dix” and “quatre-vingt-dix”; Quebec French has its own vowels, its own slang and an accent Parisians struggle with at first; the French of West and Central Africa is clear, formal in register and rich in local words; and the Caribbean and Indian Ocean islands add creoles that live beside French. A learner of standard French is understood in all of them, and understands them after some weeks of exposure.

French is among the quickest languages an English speaker can take up — on the US Foreign Service Institute's scale it takes some 600 to 750 hours of class to work in, the bracket Spanish and Dutch share — and the curve is uneven in a particular way. Reading comes almost at once, because the vocabulary is shared and the grammar is visible on the page; speaking is a matter of months; the ear takes longest, because French speech runs words together, drops the sounds the spelling shows and lands the stress at the end of the phrase rather than on the word. Learners who can read a newspaper at six months are still asking Parisians to repeat themselves at a year, and that is normal.

Paris and the tourist regions answer a visitor in English at the hotel desk, the museum and most restaurant tables, and younger French people speak it better than their reputation suggests. Away from those — in a provincial town, a market, a doctor's surgery and above all at the préfecture, the prefecture that issues residence cards — French is the only language, and a resident's paperwork, medical appointments and school meetings run in it. French companies, the public sector and the professions work in French; a limited number of international firms, start-ups and the grandes écoles' English-taught master's programmes do not. Bachelor's degrees are taught in French, and a first-year applicant sits a French test unless they hold a certificate at B2.

• Four-twenty-ten: Ninety in France is “quatre-vingt-dix”, four twenties and ten, and seventy is “soixante-dix”, sixty-ten. Belgium and Switzerland say “septante” and “nonante” and feel superior about it.
• Bonjour or nothing: Entering a shop, approaching a counter, stopping a stranger: “bonjour” first, always. The question that follows can be in broken French or in English; the greeting cannot be skipped.
• Letters you write but never say: “Ils parlent” (they speak) and “il parle” (he speaks) sound identical; the final “-ent” is silent. So are most final consonants, until the next word begins with a vowel and the liaison brings one back.
• False friends with consequences: A “préservatif” is a condom, not a preservative; “actuellement” means currently, not actually; a “librairie” is a bookshop; and “demander” is simply to ask, not to demand.
• The future of French is African: More French speakers live in Africa than in Europe, and the balance tips further every year. Kinshasa is one of the largest French-speaking cities in the world; Abidjan and Dakar are not far behind.
• Forty immortals: The Académie française, forty members elected for life, rules on the dictionary and resists English loanwords — with mixed results, since the French say “le week-end” and “le parking” anyway.
• Counting on the thumb: The French count on their fingers starting with the thumb, so a raised thumb and forefinger means two, not “one” plus a gesture. Order two coffees that way and you get two.

French levels follow the CEFR and are proven by two kinds of certificate from the French state. The diplomas — the DELF at A1, A2, B1 and B2 and the DALF at C1 and C2 — are issued by the Ministry of Education through France Éducation international, sat at Alliance Française centres and other accredited institutions in some 170 countries, and are valid for life. The tests — the TCF from the same body and the TEF from the Paris Chamber of Commerce — report a level from a score and are valid for two years, with versions built for a purpose: the TCF and TEF “IRN” for French residence and nationality, the TCF and TEF Canada for Canadian immigration, the TCF DAP for first-year admission to a French university. Quebec has its own versions for its immigration programme.

What the states ask is stated in levels. France requires A2 for the first multi-year residence card, B1 for the ten-year resident card and B2, spoken and written, for French nationality, each proven with a DELF or DALF diploma or a TCF or TEF IRN result; the au pair visa asks for basic French at A1 to A2. Canada's Express Entry awards points for French at NCLC 7 — roughly B2 — in all four skills, proven with the TCF or TEF Canada, and runs French-language invitation rounds; Quebec's programme weights French still more heavily. Switzerland's French-speaking cantons use the fide test at the national steps: spoken A1 when a family member joins, spoken A2 with written A1 for a settlement permit, spoken B1 with written A2 for naturalisation. French universities commonly ask for B2 and sit first-year applicants for the TCF DAP unless they hold a DELF B2 or a DALF. Employers in France say “courant”, fluent, and mean B2. Half a year of classes takes most adults to A2 and a full year to B1; B2, the nationality level, is usually a second year's work.

French is the second-best-served language for self-study after English, and the public broadcasters do the heavy lifting for free: an international radio station reads the news slowly every day with a transcript, and a French television channel for the world runs a complete learning platform from A1 to B2. The self-learner needs a dictionary with gender and example sentences, a conjugation reference for the verbs, which repay systematic study, and a daily hour of French spoken at natural speed with the text in front of them, because the gap between the written and the heard word is where French learners stall.

A tutor earns their place in French on the ear and the mouth. The nasal vowels, the “u” and the “r” are heard in one's own speech only when a French speaker repeats the word back, and liaison and the run-together rhythm are learned by talking, not by reading about them. A tutor also arbitrates “tu” and “vous” for the learner's real situation, drills the pronouns before the verb until they come in order, and — for anyone heading to Quebec, Belgium or West Africa — adds the accent and the vocabulary the Paris-standard course books leave out.