Learning French for Beginners: Why It Isn’t as Hard as It Looks
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French can look intimidating when you’re a beginner, especially once people start listing the pronunciation rules, verb endings and exceptions. That doesn’t make it impossible to learn.
When I started learning French, the most common response I received from English and French speakers alike was something along the lines of, “French is so hard! I can’t believe you can speak like this after only three months!”
This was usually followed by some hand-wringing over pronunciation, conjugations and the seemingly endless exceptions to every grammar rule.
French is often mentioned in conversations about the world’s “hardest languages”, but difficulty depends on what you already know and how you approach the language.
After passing the three-month milestone in my own French studies, I wanted to challenge the idea that French is somehow impossibly difficult. It has its tricky parts, but it also gives English speakers plenty of useful shortcuts.
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Your English Vocabulary Gives You a Head Start in French
One reason French feels familiar to English speakers goes back to 28 September 1066, when the Norman conquest of England began.
Norman French shaped the language of English government, law and administration for centuries. You can still hear that history in Parliament: Royal Assent is announced with a Norman French formula, which is currently Le Roy le veult for most bills.
That long history brought thousands of French-derived words into English. Before you open a phrasebook, you already recognise words such as important, possible, nation and conversation.
Use French Cognates Carefully
During my first week in French class, I wanted to say that a French word existed in English but had a different meaning. I didn’t know the French word for “meaning”, so I tried connotation with French pronunciation. My teacher understood me straight away.
Many nouns ending in -tion look similar in both languages, including nation, information and réalisation. British English often uses -ise, but -ize is also correct in British English, so that spelling difference isn’t a dependable French clue.
The circumflex is another useful clue. In words such as hôpital and forêt, it marks the historical loss of an s, which you can still see in related words such as hospitalier and forestier. This pattern is common, but it doesn’t explain every circumflex.
Treat these patterns as clues rather than rules. A familiar-looking word can have a different meaning or pronunciation, so check it before using it. This guide to French cognates and false friends will give you a safer starting point.
French Pronunciation Has Familiar Starting Points
English loanwords such as déjà vu, brochure, chauffeur and filet mignon give you a few familiar sounds. Mind you, their English pronunciations aren’t exact models for French, especially when it comes to vowels and rhythm.
French spelling also gives you recurring patterns. The final consonants in words such as faux, pas and coup are silent, although you still need to learn the exceptions rather than assuming every final consonant disappears.
Liaison is one reason a consonant can reappear in connected speech. In bon appétit, for example, you hear the n from bon before the following vowel. Liaison depends on the grammar and register of the phrase, so it’s more useful to learn it from complete examples than from isolated words.
The French r and nasal vowels will probably take some practice. Listen to a short recording, copy one phrase and compare your version with the original. That gives you something real to imitate instead of a caricature of a “French accent”.
French Conjugation Is Easier When You Look for Patterns
Verb tables can look like a wall of different endings. Start with the present tense of manger, meaning “to eat”:
- Je mange (“I eat” or “I’m eating”)
- Tu manges (“You eat”, informal singular)
- Il/Elle/On mange (“He/She/One eats”; on often means “we” in everyday speech)
- Nous mangeons (“We eat”)
- Vous mangez (“You eat”, formal singular or plural)
- Ils/Elles mangent (“They eat”)
The written endings vary, but the verb forms in je mange, tu manges, il/elle/on mange and ils/elles mangent sound the same. In everyday spoken French, on also commonly replaces nous, while nous remains normal in writing and more formal speech.
That doesn’t make every form sound identical, but it means the spoken system is less crowded than the spelling first suggests.
The Three French Verb Groups
Traditional French grammar divides verbs into three groups: regular -er verbs apart from aller; regular -ir verbs whose present participle ends in -issant; and a third group containing the remaining verbs, including many -ir and -re verbs.
The first group is productive, so many coined or borrowed verbs take the regular -er pattern. That’s a useful tendency, not a guarantee that every new verb will behave the same way.
Third-group verbs aren’t a random pile either. Learn them in families and pay attention to stem changes. For example, je viens, tu viens and il vient share one pronunciation, while ils viennent changes the vowel sound.
French Tenses Build on Familiar Pieces
French and Spanish divide tense and mood in different ways, so simply counting forms doesn’t tell you which language is easier. The useful part is how often French builds a new form from pieces you’ve already learnt.
Le passé composé
The passé composé is the main past-tense form you’ll hear in everyday conversation. It combines a present-tense form of avoir (“to have”) or être (“to be”) with a past participle.
For manger, j’ai mangé can mean “I ate” or “I have eaten”, depending on context.
French also has a passé simple, but it is practically absent from conversation and appears mainly in written narratives. Beginners should learn to recognise it without treating it as an urgent speaking target.
L’imparfait
The imparfait uses one set of endings. For most verbs, take the present-tense nous form, remove -ons and add the imperfect ending. With manger, nous mangeons gives you the stem mang-, then je mangeais.
The stem of être is the exception: ét-, as in j’étais. Choosing between the imparfait and passé composé still takes practice, but the mechanics of forming the imperfect are regular.
Le futur proche
The futur proche combines a present-tense form of aller, meaning “to go”, with an infinitive. Je vais manger roughly matches “I’m going to eat”.
Le futur simple
For regular -er and -ir verbs, the future endings attach to the infinitive. Regular -re verbs drop the final e, while several common irregular verbs use a special future stem.
Those irregular future stems do double duty in the conditional, so learning ser- for être gives you both je serai (“I will be”) and je serais (“I would be”).
Le conditionnel
The present conditional uses the future stem with the same endings as the imparfait. Once you know those two pieces, a form such as je mangerais (“I would eat”) is much easier to recognise.
The more French you learn, the more often you’ll see old building blocks turning up in new forms.
How Much French Subjunctive Do Beginners Need?
The French subjunctive appears most often in subordinate clauses, usually after que, when the sentence expresses things such as necessity, wishes, doubt or emotion. It can also appear without que in some fixed or formal expressions, so que is a clue rather than a complete rule.
Compare how Spanish and French handle this conditional sentence:
English: “If I were in your position, I would be happy.”
Español: Si yo estuviera en tu lugar, sería feliz.
Français: Si j’étais à ta place, je serais heureux.
Spanish uses the imperfect subjunctive estuviera, while French uses the imperfect indicative étais after si. The French conditional serais appears in the result clause.
The French imperfect subjunctive does survive, but mainly in literary or formal writing and a handful of fixed expressions. A beginner is better off learning to recognise it, then concentrating on the present and past subjunctive forms used in modern speech.
Start Speaking French Before You Feel Ready
For a broader beginner plan, this video gives you eight practical ways to start using French.
French has quirks and exceptions, just like any language. You don’t need to pretend they’ve disappeared, but you also don’t need to let the full grammar list delay your first conversations.
As a language nerd, I’m a big fan of Benny. His “Speak from Day One” approach shaped how I thought about this, and his guide to why French is easier than it sounds takes the same practical view of listening.
Speak with the words you have, ask people whether they’re happy to correct you and adjust as you go. Some people will correct you and others won’t, so asking makes the exchange easier for everyone.
If you want another self-study option, read our FrenchPod101 review. If you’d like to take the next step with us, have a look at the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp.
You won’t sound polished at the beginning, and you don’t need to. Every real conversation gives you something specific to practise next.
Original article by Zack Simon, updated by the Fluent in 3 Months team.
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