French for Beginners: What You Need to Know

French was my first love when it comes to languages. There’s an expression in French: “On revient toujours à son premier amour.” It means that you always go back to your first love. I love French. I love all the languages that I have learned, but I have a special affection for French.

My Introduction to French

I grew up in Montreal in the 1950s and studied French every day in school from grade two through high school. After ten years, I still couldn’t hold a conversation or understand spoken French.

This was typical. Despite being a good student and passing all the grammar tests with high marks, I couldn’t speak the language. I struggled to form sentences and had no real comprehension. I never read French newspapers or watched French movies—I simply couldn’t understand them.

Unfortunately, this is still common in Canada today. The ability of English Canadians to speak French remains low and has even declined in recent years. Schools focus heavily on verb conjugations, agreement rules, and reflexive forms—but students still can’t speak. Why? Perhaps it’s precisely because of how it’s taught.

By grade three, I could recite all 16 verbs that use “être” as their auxiliary verb. But by grade 11, I still couldn’t converse in French. Yet, I eventually became fluent, attended a top French university, and developed a lifelong love of the language.

So what changed? And what can beginners learn from my experience?

Get interested

The simplest advice for learning French? Develop a passion for it. I once wrote a blog post called Why Learn French? Six Reasons. But passion can’t be forced—it usually grows for personal reasons. Still, as the French saying goes, “L’appétit vient en mangeant” (appetite comes with eating). Sometimes you just need to get started.

In that earlier article, I wrote:
“To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy language learners resemble each other. They develop a passion for the language they are learning. Each unhappy language learner finds their own reason to give up.”
That’s been true in my case—my love for French has lasted over 50 years.

Every language has its challenges. It takes time to adjust to a different system of expressing thoughts and emotions—one shaped by another culture. Staying motivated is essential.

The Hungarian polyglot Kato Lomb once said that language learning success is motivation plus time, divided by inhibition. I would replace “inhibition” with “resistance.” Inhibition is one kind of resistance—but frustration with how languages are taught is another, and perhaps an even bigger obstacle.

If you’re struggling, try shifting your focus from perfection to passion. Start small, stay curious, and let your interest grow over time.

French for Beginners – What You Need to Know

There is too much emphasis on grammar in French instruction, and I believe this is unhelpful. We need to immerse ourselves in the language right away, by listening to and reading stories. Initially these should be short, full of repetition, like the Mini Stories at LingQ. The Mini Stories will take you from beginner to intermediate in French. Practice the basic patterns of the language with lots of repetition. They are also a great refresher of the grammatical patterns when you are more advanced. Then, as soon as possible, the immersion should consist of compelling content, audio with text.

Accessing this kind of material is made possible thanks to the Internet. Whether you enjoy listening to French YouTubers, podcasts, or reading blogs, the amount of content you can find is endless. Francais Authentique and innerFrench are great resources. None of this existed during Kato Lomb’s time, nor when I was learning French 50 years or more ago.

Yes, but what about the grammar and other difficulties of French? Well, here is a quick summary that can help you. Don’t try to remember anything here. Just use this, and other resources, as a reference as you set out to discover this lovely language on your own. You can also read LingQ’s free French grammar guide if you wish.

A Guide to French for Beginners

Pronunciation

French pronunciation can be tricky at first. The tones are flatter than in English, and the nasal vowels can sound almost identical to new learners. Add to that “liaison”—where the end of one word blends into the next—and it’s no wonder French can feel like a blur in the beginning. But with enough exposure, your brain will adapt.

These features can be frustrating, but don’t worry. The language won’t change for you—you’ll change for the language. Over time, and with regular listening, you’ll start hearing where words begin and end. Eventually, you’ll be able to reproduce the sounds yourself. It’s a gradual process, so patience is key.

If it helps, French learners struggle with English too. French only has about three distinct pitch patterns, while English has seven or more. So just as French speakers must adjust to the “sing-song” rhythm of English, English speakers must learn to tone it down when speaking French.

One simple tip for sounding more French? Get used to the “euh” sound—heard in words like je, le, and me, and at the end of many words. It’s also used like “um” or “uh” in English, as a verbal pause. Mastering that small sound can make your speech feel more natural and help you blend in better with native rhythms.

With time, listening, and patience, even French will start to feel familiar.

Positive statements, negative statements and questions

You have to get used to what in English we call the ‘w’ words: what, where, when, why, who, how: “quoi” , “où” , “qui” , “quand” , “pourquoi” , “comment”. You should get used to those at the beginning of your studies, as they are essential for making statements and asking questions. Try Google Translate to see what the corresponding words and structures are in French to questions you have in English.

In fact, you should get in the habit of Googling whenever you have a question about French, including grammar issues. It is far more effective to search for an answer to something that you have noticed in the language, that you are curious about, rather than having a teacher push an explanation at you.

When you see question words in your reading at LingQ, save them. You should do this not only to remember these words, but because the LingQ system will give you lots of examples of these words in use. The examples usually come from lessons you have already studied. The advantage of looking at examples from lessons you have already studied is that you probably know the words. Very often, if you’re reading in a grammar book you are provided with examples, where you don’t know the words. That’s not so helpful.

Gender and number

There are languages, like Japanese, that have no gender and no number. French has both. In French, pronouns and adjectives have to agree, even verbs have to agree. For a quick explanation you can Google. In the case of verb agreement in French, you may want go to Lawless French . It tells us that:

“Accord du verbe. In French, the past participles in compound tenses and moods sometimes have to agree with another part of the sentence, either the subject or the direct object. It’s a lot like adjectives: when an agreement is required, you need to add e for feminine subjects/objects and s for plural ones.”

 

There are abundant grammar resources on the web. Find the ones you find most useful and use them when you are curious about something. Getting used to new grammar patterns takes time. You don’t learn it the first time, not even the fifth time. But eventually it becomes second nature, believe me.

Verbs

Very soon you’ll discover that whereas in English verb forms don’t change much for person, in French every form of the verb changes, depending on the person, and tense and “mood”. We call these verb changes, the different conjugation forms of verbs. It’s very difficult to remember these conjugations. You can spend all kinds of time pouring over conjugation tables. In my experience it’s a very unsatisfying thing to do because you forget them. You might remember them for tomorrow’s test and then you forget them, so you constantly have to refer to them and see them in context.

If you’re on the computer, just Google “French conjugations” or “conjugation” of any verb and you will find what you are looking for. The same is true, by the way, with pronouns, adjectives. Anything you want to look at, you just Google and it will be there.

There are even conjugating dictionaries like Le Conjugueur and  Context Reverso. These are two of the dictionaries that you can use at LingQ. Don’t rely on memorization. Keep reading and listening. Look things up when you are stumped and stay focused on things of interest.

Also, here’s a short list of common French verbs to help get you started.

Conditional and subjunctive

Some people are intimidated by these verb forms or moods in French, without realizing that we have the same patterns in English. The English conditional, of course, revolves around the word “if”, as in the sentence “I would go if…” etc.  The same is true in French with the word “si”. Type some “if” sentences in English into Google Translate to see how French deals with this issue.

The subjunctive is used when there is uncertainty about whether something is going to happen, as in “you have to go”, “I want you to go”, “although you went” etc. Begin by noticing the subjunctive. Don’t worry about whether you can get it right when speaking or writing. Save the subjunctive form of verbs when you think you might have come across it at LingQ. Check it out in Le Conjugueur or in another conjugating dictionary like Context Reverso. Both of these dictionaries are available at LingQ.

You will slowly get more and more used to the conditional and the subjunctive. Continue your enjoyable discovery of French, through listening and reading, and your confidence in this seemingly scary looking verb forms will gradually grow.

There are many  things they do differently in French. The French are not hungry or cold, they have hunger and they have cold. They have age, and they say “ I call myself” instead of “my name is”. At first these patterns seem strange because they are different from what we are used to. Don’t be put off, and don’t try to nail these things down. Take note, observe, discover, and move on.

Final Thoughts:

I have touched lightly on some of what you will find in French. Don’t put these things up front. Don’t think that the mass of grammar rules need to be mastered before you can enjoy the language. That is what they did to me in school. It was when I broke away from that, and immersed myself in content of interest, reading, listening, watching movies, and conversing with people, that I started to fall in love with French. That stimulated my motivation, reduced my frustration, and induced me to spend the time necessary to achieve fluency in this lovely language, “mon premier amour” among languages.

Here you can read a post about ¨French pronunciation guide¨

Planning a trip to France? Check out this LingQ blog post to learn some fun French pick up lines!