French for Travel, Work and Study

In Paris, English covers the airports, the main stations, hotels, the big museums and the restaurants around the sights, and most people working in tourism speak it; the centres of Lyon, Nice and Bordeaux are much the same. Provincial France is another matter: the market in a Burgundy town, the pharmacy in a Breton village and the regional bus run in French, and a visitor who opens in English may meet a hesitation before anyone switches. Brussels is officially bilingual, French and Dutch, but French is the language of its streets, while English is common in the EU quarter; Wallonia, the south of Belgium, lives in French. In Geneva, Lausanne and Neuchâtel English carries in hotels and the international districts, and French everywhere else.

Montreal moves between French and English with ease, and shop staff often greet you with a two-language “Bonjour-Hi” and follow your answer; Quebec City and the rest of the province work in French. In Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, Arabic — and in Morocco and Algeria also Amazigh — is the language of home, but French is spoken at hotel desks, in pharmacies and banks, on menus and road signs. In Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire French is the official language of offices, schools and newspapers, while Wolof in Senegal and a range of local languages in Côte d'Ivoire fill the markets and the homes.

Two weeks of daily practice buy the courtesy formulas, the numbers at the speed a baker says them, and enough questions to order, buy a ticket and ask the way. French spelling is a poor guide to sound — silent final letters, nasal vowels, words that run together — so spend part of those weeks listening, or you will recognise on paper what you cannot catch in speech.

French formality is real, and it starts at the door. Say bonjour before anything else — to the baker, the bus driver, the pharmacist, the room as you enter a small shop — and add madame or monsieur, without a surname, for extra courtesy; a question fired without it reads as rude, and much of the coolness visitors report in Paris comes from skipping it. Vous is the form for anyone you do not know, anyone older and anyone serving you; tu is for friends, family, children and whoever offers it, often with “on peut se tutoyer ?”. France and French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland wait for that offer; Quebec reaches tu fast, even across a shop counter, and nobody minds a visitor who keeps vous.

• Seventy, eighty, ninety: France and Quebec count soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix. Belgium and Switzerland say septante and nonante, and the cantons of Vaud, Valais and Fribourg also say huitante for eighty.
• Which meal is dinner: In France breakfast is the petit-déjeuner, lunch the déjeuner and the evening meal the dîner. In Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland the déjeuner is breakfast, the dîner is lunch and the souper is the evening meal, so an invitation “à dîner” may mean noon.
• Quebec words: Magasiner is to go shopping, a dépanneur is the corner shop, a courriel is an email and the fin de semaine the weekend. A “merci” is answered with “bienvenue”, and a car is often a char in conversation.
• False friends: A librairie sells books, a bibliothèque lends them; a location is a rental; actuellement means currently; a préservatif is a condom, not a preservative; an entrée on a French menu is the starter.
• Menu and carte: In France a menu or a formule is a set meal at one price; dishes chosen one by one come à la carte. Prices are written with a decimal comma, so twelve euros fifty reads “12,50”.

Business happens in French in Paris, Lyon, Toulouse and Marseille, in Brussels and Liège, in Geneva and Lausanne, in Montreal and Quebec City, and in the offices of Casablanca, Tunis, Algiers, Dakar and Abidjan, where banking, contracts and much of management run in it. It is a working language of the EU institutions in Brussels and Luxembourg, the UN offices in Geneva, the OECD and UNESCO in Paris, the African Union and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. English is enough inside multinational headquarters, much of the Paris start-up scene and the international finance of Geneva and Luxembourg, until the work reaches a French-speaking client, a supplier, an accountant or an administration.

Business French keeps vous until the senior person offers tu, and with a client or a director in France that may never happen. People are addressed as Monsieur or Madame without the surname, “Bonjour, Madame”, and first names wait until they are offered. The working day starts with a round of bonjour and a handshake with each colleague, and skipping it reads as coldness. Quebec offices are more relaxed: tu and first names come early, even with a manager.

A formal letter, or a first email to someone you do not know, opens “Madame, Monsieur,” and closes with a full formula such as “Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées”. Day-to-day email is shorter, “Bonjour Madame,” and “Cordialement” or “Bien cordialement”, with “Bien à vous” frequent in Belgium; Quebec emails often end with “Salutations” or a simple “Merci”.

Employers hiring a foreigner for a client-facing role in France, Belgium or Switzerland usually expect working fluency, and B2 is the common floor in job ads; law, communications and the public sector look for more. In Quebec the Charter of the French Language makes French the normal language of work: offers, contracts and internal communications must be available in French, and an employer who requires another language has to justify it. International teams may require no French at all, but those who speak it are the ones sent to meet the clients.

French public universities teach their bachelor's degrees, the licence, in French — at Sorbonne Université, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the universities of Lyon, Bordeaux or Strasbourg — and the Grandes Écoles teach their core programmes in French, while HEC Paris, ESSEC and École Polytechnique run many master's and specialised programmes in English. Sciences Po teaches its undergraduate college in French, in English or in both depending on the campus, and its English track asks for no French at entry. English-taught master's degrees are now common across France.

For a first-year place at a French university, applicants from outside the EU go through the Demande d'admission préalable and take the TCF DAP unless they already hold a DELF B2 or a DALF. In the countries covered by the Études en France procedure, the whole application runs through Campus France, which asks for the test result with the file. Most French-taught degrees expect B2, and demanding programmes in law, the humanities or medicine look for C1.

In Belgium, UCLouvain, the Université libre de Bruxelles and the University of Liège teach in French. In Switzerland the University of Geneva, the University of Lausanne and EPFL teach their bachelor's degrees in French, while EPFL's master's degrees run largely in English. In Quebec, the Université de Montréal, Université Laval and UQAM teach in French, and McGill and Concordia in English, with McGill students allowed to hand in written work in French. Universities in Morocco, Tunisia and Senegal teach sciences, medicine and business largely in French.

Exchange students have more room: Erasmus+ places in France often ask for B1, and host universities run French courses for incoming students. A language course can also be the purpose of the stay itself. France's student visa lists French language courses among its purposes, and Switzerland issues a language course visa for its French, German and Italian schools.

The DELF and DALF are six separate diplomas, one per level, issued by the French Ministry of National Education and designed by France Éducation international. The DELF covers A1 to B2 and the DALF C1 and C2; each is pass or fail, and a diploma does not expire. Versions for children (DELF Prim), teenagers (DELF junior) and working adults (DELF Pro) use the same scale. The DCL, also from the Ministry, certifies professional French in a single exam and awards the level the result reaches.

The TCF, from France Éducation international, and the TEF, from the CCI Paris Île-de-France, are tests rather than diplomas: one sitting, a result placed on the scale from A1 to C2, and a certificate valid for two years. Each comes in versions for a purpose. The TCF Canada and the TEF Canada serve federal immigration, where French at NCLC 7 in all four skills earns additional Express Entry points and access to French-language invitation rounds; the TCF Québec and the TEFAQ serve Quebec's own selection, whose skilled-worker programme sets a minimum spoken level that rises with the occupation; the TCF IRN and the TEF IRN serve residence and nationality in France; the TCF DAP serves first-year university admission.

France ties its residence documents to a rising level: A2 for a first multi-year residence card, B1 for the long-term resident card and B2, spoken and written, for naturalisation, proven by a DELF or DALF or by a TCF IRN or TEF IRN result. Swiss naturalisation asks for B1 spoken and A2 written in the canton's language, and some cantons ask for more. Among France's visas, the au pair visa is the one that names a level: basic French, A1–A2.

A level takes hours, not a set number of months. The US Foreign Service Institute places French among the languages quickest for English speakers, at around 750 classroom hours to professional working proficiency; A2 is a realistic goal for a few months of regular classes, and B2 usually takes a year or more of steady study. DELF and DALF exams sit at accredited centres — Alliances Françaises, Instituts français and universities — in cities worldwide, several times a year; the TCF and TEF at approved centres, often the same ones; the DCL at the Ministry's adult-education centres in France.

A working kit has four parts: a dictionary for meaning, a conjugation reference for the verbs, a flashcard deck for memory and a daily dose of spoken French. Look a word up in WordReference, check the forum threads where French, Belgian and Quebec speakers compare usage, and move it into Anki with a whole sentence. From B1 the monolingual Larousse is the better habit, and the Bescherelle settles every verb question once the tenses multiply.

Listening matters more in French than in most languages, because the spelling hides the sound. InnerFrench speaks slowly about real subjects; RFI's Journal en français facile reads the world news in ten minutes of clear French with a transcript; TV5Monde's learner site builds exercises around its own news and series and labels them by level. A course book series such as Alter Ego+ or Édito gives grammar an order, and the official DELF sample papers show exactly what each level asks. For Quebec, add the local media and the Usito dictionary, which records Quebec usage.

What no tool does is make you answer at conversational speed, or tell you that a correct sentence sounds odd to a Montrealer.

French punishes the learner who only reads: the sentence you can write is often the one you cannot hear or say. A tutor closes that gap by making you speak and listen at the same time, and by correcting the vous you forgot, the liaison you missed and the email closing that sounds wrong to a French reader.

An exam changes the lessons. The DELF B2 oral asks you to defend an opinion on a short document after half an hour's preparation, while the TCF and TEF speaking sections are short timed tasks in front of an examiner; rehearsing the format with someone who knows it turns the day itself into routine.

Treat the trial lesson as an interview. Ask where the tutor comes from and whether they can prepare you for another variety; whether they correct mid-sentence or at the end; what the first month would cover for your goal; and, for an exam, which DELF, TCF or TEF versions they have prepared candidates for and whether they work with the official sample papers.