Learn French
Français · a free course from absolute beginner to C2 · one lesson a day
French gives an English speaker more for free than any other language, because so much of formal English is French wearing a different coat — and it repays the effort across four continents, with most of its speakers now in West and Central Africa rather than in Europe. It is also the language whose written form you will be able to read long before you can follow it spoken, which makes the early reading lessons unusually satisfying.
Start where the language actually starts
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What is hard about French, and what this course does about it
The difficulty of French is the gap between the page and the ear. Whole endings are written and not said — parle, parles and parlent are one sound — words run together in liaison, and the vowels include several with no English equivalent. So audio is not an extra here: the vocabulary comes recorded rather than read out by your browser, the listening section is built from words already taught, and the spelling rules that decide what is silent are taught as rules rather than left to be absorbed.
What the course covers
The syllabus is 364 numbered steps, and the first 401 of them have a lesson written by hand behind them — the explanation, the examples and the questions, not a template filled in. 30 of those steps are the grammar core: everything you need before the course turns to recombining it, which is the work that carries you from intermediate to C2.
The first 14 grammar points, in order
Straight from the course's own syllabus. Each gets its own lesson, and comes back in the reading and listening of later ones.
- Singular subject pronouns (je, tu, il/elle, on) and être for one person
- Plural subject pronouns (nous, vous, ils/elles), the plural of être, and tu vs vous
- The verb avoir, and core avoir expressions (avoir faim, avoir ans)
- Regular present tense of -ER verbs (parler, habiter, regarder)
- Noun gender and the definite articles le, la and les
- Un, une, des — and elision (l'homme, j'ai)
- Regular present tense of -IR verbs (finir, choisir) and the -iss- plural
- Regular present tense of -RE verbs (vendre, attendre, répondre)
- Irregular present-tense verbs: aller and faire
- Irregular present-tense verbs: venir and prendre
- The near future: aller + infinitive, and venir de for the recent past
- Partitive articles (du, de la, des) and talking about food and quantities
- Possessive and demonstrative adjectives (mon/ma/mes; ce/cette/ces)
- Adjective agreement and position (une grande maison, un livre intéressant)
How one lesson works
Around 20–30 minutes at the fullest setting. Three lengths to choose from, and a shorter one spreads each grammar point over more lessons rather than taking the support away.
- Review first. Every card that is due today comes back before anything new starts — all of them, with no cap, because a cap on reviews is a cap on what you remember.
- New words. A handful of new words, dealt straight down the frequency list from wherever you got to, each with its recording.
- The grammar. One point, explained in writing with worked examples and tables, before the questions that test it.
- Reading. A passage in French in three parts, written from words you have already been taught, with comprehension questions.
- Listening. The same again for the ear, in three parts.
- Writing. From lesson 7, one task where you produce French of your own and get it back marked.
The words, and the order they come in
The course's vocabulary is a frequency list 20,000 words long, and the deck deals it in rank order from word one — so the words you meet first are the ones standing between you and an ordinary sentence. You can read the top of that list without signing up: the most common French words.
The course's words and phrases are recorded in a French voice — 4,992 clips, counted on the server — and the listening section plays them as connected speech rather than as a word list.
Ready when you are
The course is free. Without a subscription there is a five-second house ad before a lesson and you study one language at a time; Verbavia Premium removes both for $4 a month, with a 7-day trial. No advertising network and no tracking, either way.