Section 1: Introduction to the French language

Lecture 1: Introduction

Hello and welcome to this course! This course is meant for english speakers with zero notion of french or people who would like to be able to find everything they need on their own and be more independent. I will not teach you grammar deeply or how to conjugate complex verbs, it’s more of a course to teach you the basics, like numbers, pronouns and in general, see if you like the French language and help you decide if you want to learn more. Also, if you’d like to be more confident and stop relying on people when travelling, this course is for you! 

This course is divided into seven sections. The first section is about the French language in general; where it’s spoken, the differences in the alphabet, the letters, the pronunciation, etc… 

The second section is about the genders, common verbs, some basic vocabulary and cultural matters. After section two, you will be able to make simple sentences and ask basic information.

In section three, we will learn a lot of vocabulary. Now that you know how to build sentences, you need vocabulary to fill them. 

Section four will be a big step, I’ll leave you in the wild to make sure you worked enough on the previous sections. We’ll work on family, jobs, finding things, and common verbs. 

In section five, you’ll learn airport and hotel vocabulary and personal items. 

Section six will focus on understanding spoken french, common abbreviations and shortened names. We'll exercise on spelling, understanding spoken information. 

Section seven will be focused on dialogues, at the airport and the restaurant.

I recommend working on one or two lectures a day, you don’t need to rush through, practice is key in learning a language. I will work on new lectures and publish new content each month. Thank you for your trust in my course, and I hope you’ll have a great time ! Happy learning !

Note: This document is a free sample of the full course I teach on Skillshare and Udemy. Buying the full course will come with the full script, videos or audio for each section and instructor support.

Lecture 2: Why learn French?

Have you ever dreamt about a super desperate situation? Like, you can’t run, you’re trapped in a speeding car, or you just landed in a french speaking country, and your only french speaker friend is gone missing, you’re on your own. All you remember is “oui oui, ca va”, you’re not going to get far. Given that over 65% of the French population does not speak a second language frequently, maybe you should learn french to avoid relying on others. There’s many benefits about speaking french :

⦁ French is the fourth most widely spoken language in the European Union.

⦁ 80 million people speak french as their mother tongue and a total of 247 million people speak french.

⦁ Knowing a second or third language can help you in your search for a job.

⦁ Believe it or not, you will make new friends and friends will always bring you social benefits.

Look at this map, this represents where you are able to communicate now as an english speaker :

English can already take you pretty far, that’s a fact. You can travel to Australia, the UK, and half the African continent.  

Now, look at this map, it represents where you’d able to communicate if you spoke French and English:

Now you’re able to communicate in over 70% of the African continent, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Madagascar and French Islands. That’s a whole lot of new countries you’d feel comfortable in while travelling! 

One day, if you worked hard enough and are able to speak on a good level, you might even be able to understand old French poetry, and that is a great reward, trust me!

I hope this course will give you motivation to learn more every day and travel to discover more places!

Lecture 3: You can do it! And Google is your friend

If you think you’re going to have a hard time learning because everything looks and sounds so different, let me reassure you by giving you a couple words in French. You will easily see that it’s not that different:

“Ticket de parking”-> You probably understood everything. It means parking ticket. The order of the words is not the same, but the vocabulary is similar. The word “de” means the ticket is related to the parking. It’s like “Permis de conduire”, it means “Permit of driving”, therefore, “permis de conduire” means driving license. Please note that a ticket in French is just a receipt or a paper where a price or code is written, if you want to say you got a speeding ticket, you’ll say “J’ai eu un PV”. PV is the report that the police officer writes to you when you’re caught doing illegal things.

“Restaurant végétarien” -> “restaurant”, often shortened as “restau” or “resto” means the same thing as the English word. “Végétarien” means vegetarian. The accents tell us how to pronounce the “e” letter. 

“Agent de police” -> Just like we’ve seen with “ticket de parking”, the “de” word links “agent” and “police”. This means an agent of the police, a police officer.

“Bus scolaire” -> this one may be a little harder. You know what a bus is, and the word “scolaire” sounds like scholar, it’s related to school. “Bus scolaire” means school bus. If you have studied latin, it will be super helpful in understanding the structure of French words.

“Caméra digitale”-> You got it, it’s a digital camera. The “e” at the end of “digitale” means that the word “camera” is feminine. If we wanted to say digital phone, it would be “téléphone digital”, no “e” because “téléphone” is a masculine word.

See? There’s a ton of words you won’t have to study, because they’re similar to English words.

If you’re not sure about the pronunciation of a word, Google Translator is your friend. While you’re in Google, just type Google Translator or Google Trad and type the French word you want to hear. When you’re done typing, just hit the speaker logo and a lovely lady will read the word for you. Make sure to select French as the input language. 

Section 2 : Basic vocabulary and grammar

Lecture 1: The alphabet and its pronounciation

You’re lucky! If you learn French, you don’t have to learn a new alphabet. But you’ll have to learn the difference in the pronunciation of the letters. If you simply take a look at a French computer keyboard, you’ll already notice a major difference: Our first row is called AZERTY, while English keyboards have QWERTY instead. Since I spend most of my time writing in English, I bought a QWERTY keyboard. 

Still looking at the keyboard, you’ll notice we have accents on letters like “u”, “a” and “e”. We also have two different versions of the letter “c”, but don’t worry, as soon as you learn the rule about accents, you’ll never make a mistake. 

Once you’re done spotting the differences, we can go the pronunciation part of the lecture. You will quickly notice every time it’s pronounced in a different way than the English alphabet

A – B – C – D – E – F – G - H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z.

About 5 or 6 letters are pronounced like in English. I’d like to highlight the difficulties of some letters of the French alphabet:

The letter “G” sounds like the “jay” part of “Jay-Z”. It is super confusing to English speakers because the French “G” sounds like the English “J”, don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. 

Fun fact: The letter “G” is frequently use in texts to shorten the “j’ai” (meaning “I have” or in French), because it’s pronounced the same way. In English, it’s the letter U that is used to shorten “you”, same thing. 

The letter “I” is a really short letter, unlike the “I” sound in English. 

The “J” letter sounds like the “je” part of the word “Jesus”. Just drop the “d” sound and you’re good to go. Since some French speakers have trouble with “J” and “G” too, you might hear French speakers say that “David Guetta is the best French “Diji” ”. Please don’t laugh, they’re really trying their best.

While the “K” letter is pronounced “kay” in English, it’s pronounced like “kah” in French.

Depending on your accent, the letter “O” sounds similar.

“Q” is pretty similar in both languages, except our “Q” is a little shorter. Fun fact: This letter is used to shorten the word “cul”, pronounced the same way, which means “butt”.

“R” is a really hard sound. The English “R” as we learn it sounds more like a “W”. You’ll have to pull the Spanish out of you to pronounce this “R” right, but do not roll your tongue, the sound of the “R” is right in the middle. 

The “W” in French literally means “double v”, in English, you pronounce it like “double u”. We looked at the letter and said, “yep it’ two letters “V” put next to each other, so double v”.

The “Y” letter is pronounced “I grec” which means “greek I”. In Dutch, it’s pronounced Upsilon. Every language family seems to see this letter differently.

If you are Canadian or know the pronunciation of the alphabet by a Canadian, you’ll notice we say “Z” the same way. 

Don’t worry, if you’re ever in trouble with spelling something in French, you can still pull the “Charlie” card by giving your letter and a word to confirm it. Example:

“C comme Charlie”, “S comme Sierra”, “F comme Foxtrot”. Just like the way the police identify car tags over their radio.

Now that you’re familiar with the alphabet, we’ll see how it’s divided. In French, there’s twenty-six letters, six are vowels and twenty consonants:

A, E, I, O, U and Y are vowels. The rest of the alphabet are consonants.

Lecture 2: Months and days

Okay, now you’ve mastered the alphabet, let’s learn some vocabulary! You will need the basics first, months, days and numbers. Take your time with your learning, don’t rush and finish everything in 10 minutes. If you need to hear something again, you can go back in time using the navigation bar on the video player. Let’s start with the days first. If you know a little bit of Italian, you’ll see it sounds pretty similar.

LUNDI – MONDAY

Do you know that “huh” sound Kanye West makes on some of his songs, that’s your Monday sound! The “LUN” part is long, and the end of the word is short. The “di” sound is always short when you’re talking about days.

MARDI – TUESDAY

Do not forget what I said about the letter “R”, pronunciation is important. If you do not say the “R” letter right, you’ll always make the mistake.

MERCREDI – WEDNESDAY

This one is a little harder because you’re facing three weird letters put together: “RCR”. Think of the English word “recruit” and remove the “e”, that how “RCR” should sound.

JEUDI – THURSDAY

This one is a little easier, do not forget that the “jeu” sound has to be longer than the “di”. Fun fact about Jeudi, we often joke online about Star Wars using the word Jeudi, because it’s similar to “Jedi”. We often say “the return of the Jeudi”

VENDREDI – FRIDAY

The first part of the word “ven”, is pronounced slowly and the rest of the word is quick.

SAMEDI – SATURDAY

The letter “e” is not clearly pronounced here. 

DIMANCHE – SUNDAY

The combination of the letters “CH” turns into a “sh” sound, like in “sharp”. The ending “e” is usually dropped when speaking fast.

Let’s start talking about months now, you’ll see, some months are similar to English.

JANVIER – JANUARY

The “ier” is pronounced like a quick “yay”, so it should sound like “janv-yay”

FÉVRIER – FEBRUARY

Février has an acute accent on the “e”, which means it’s not a regular “e”. Same thing goes for the “ier” sound, it’s “févr-yay”. In some regions, the “I” is more pronounced, so it sounds like “févri-yay”.

MARS – MARCH

This one is pronounced just like a Mars candy bar, except the “A” sounds more like the French “A”. Do not forget to pronounce the “s” at the end of the word.

AVRIL – APRIL

Just like Avril Lavigne, but more Frenchy.

MAI – MAY

This one sounds 90% like the English word.

JUIN – JUNE

This “uin” sound can be difficult to pronounce, so focus and repeat it again.

JUILLET – JULY

This one is pronounced like “joo-wi-yay”

AOUT – AUGUST

The “a” is not pronounced here.

SEPTEMBRE – SEPTEMBRE

OCTOBRE - OCTOBER

NOVEMBRE - NOVEMBER

DÉCEMBRE – DECEMBER

The last four months are easier to write and remember, be careful to work on the pronunciation though.

Lecture 3: Numbers

Okay, big step ahead! Numbers… they’re not super easy, but at least they’re repetitive. There’s an easy method to remember everything. You have to learn numbers from one to a hundred first. Once you know your numbers, you just need to add other numbers to talk about one thousand, two thousand, etc… The numbers in French have the same structure as English numbers. In Dutch for example, it’s different, here’s how it works:

So, you’ll be fine, just make sure to practice every day. First, let’s look at zero to ten.

Zero – Not pronounced the English way, it’s “zay-ro”

Un – Let’s use the Kanye sound again, “huh”

Deux – The combination of “eu” sound like “huh”, the “x” at the end of the word is silent.

Trois – The “s” is silent

Quatre – The “qua” is pronounced like “kah”. If you really want to speak properly, don’t forget the “e” at the end, even though most French speakers will drop it.

Cinq – The “cinq” almost sounds like “sunk”.

Six – The “x” is pronounced as an “s”, so it’s “sis”.

Sept – The “p” is silent, so just say it like “set”

Huit – The “h” is silent here, so it sounds like “witt”. If you pronounce it the right way, it will actually sound like you’re starting to whistle.

Neuf – This one sounds like it’s written, “neuff”.

Dix – Once again the “x” sounds like an “s”.

From now on, it’s pretty simple. But I have to warn you before we start, the people from France have a weird way of counting over the number sixty. I will explain it later. It’s your choice if you’d rather learn the Belgian way of counting. Let’s continue with numbers from eleven to ninety-nine.

Onze, Douze, Treize, Quatorze, Quinze, Seize

From here, you can see a pattern in the words: It becomes “dix” (ten) and the number associated: 17 is 10+7, 18 is 10+8, etc…

Dix-sept, Dix-huit, Dix-neuf, Vingt

Now you know that « vingt » means twenty. Once again, there’s a pattern. It goes on until sixty.

Vingt

Vingt et un

Vingt-deux

Vingt-trois

Vingt-quatre

Vingt-cinq

Vingt-six

Vingt-sept

Vingt-huit

Vingt-neuf Trente

Trente et un

Trente-deux

Trente-trois

Trente-quatre

Trente-cinq

Trente-six

Trente-sept

Trente-huit

Trente-neuf

Quarante

Quarante et un

Quarante-deux

Quarante-trois

Quarante-quatre

Quarante-cinq

Quarante-six

Quarante-sept

Quarante-huit

Quarante-neuf

Cinquante

Cinquante et un

Cinquante-deux

Cinquante-trois

Cinquante-quatre

Cinquante-cinq

Cinquante-six

Cinquante-sept

Cinquante-huit

Cinquante-neuf

Soixante

Soixante et un

Soixante-deux

Soixante-trois

Soixante-quatre

Soixante-cinq

Soixante-six

Soixante-sept

Soixante-huit

Soixante-neuf

Okay, you’re still in the safe zone about numbers, please welcome seventy, pronounced like sixty-ten. Then it goes on, sixty-eleven, sixty-twelve, etc… Please stick to one method, either the French one or the Belgian one, there’s no need to learn both or try to blend in using the French way unless you’re a spy. Belgians understand the French numbers and Frenchies understand the Belgian way. The way you talk will just give away information on whether you’re a native French speaker or not. If someone tells you a number using the way you don’t usually use, repeat it using your method and check if you’re talking about the same numbers.

Soixante-dix  

Soixante et onze 

Soixante-douze 

Soixante-treize 

Soixante-quatorze 

Soixante-quinze  

Soixante-seize 

Soixante-dix-sept

Soixante-dix-huit

Soixante-dix-neuf 

Fun fact: Some people from Switzerland say “octante” or “huitaine” to talk about the number eighty. French say “quatre-vingts” to say eighty. It literally means “four times twenty”. After quatre-vingts, you add one, two, three, etc… Once you reached eighty nine, you get back to that weird pattern and go eighty ten, eighty eleven, etc…

Quatre-vingts 

Quatre-vingt-un 

Quatre-vingt-deux 

Quatre-vingt-trois 

Quatre-vingt-quatre  

Quatre-vingt-cinq 

Quatre-vingt-six 

Quatre-vingt-sept 

Quatre-vingt-huit

Quatre-vingt-neuf Quatre-vingt-dix 

Quatre-vingt-onze  

Quatre-vingt-douze 

Quatre-vingt-treize 

Quatre-vingt-quatorze 

Quatre-vingt-quinze 

Quatre-vingt-seize 

Quatre-vingt-dix-sept 

Quatre-vingt-dix-huit 

Quatre-vingt dix-neuf 

Alright, you can breathe for a minute, you just learned the hardest part of it. Congrats! Now let’s get to one hundred and above. It’s much simpler, trust me. 

Cent – Means one hundred. 

If you want to count over one hundred, just add the desired number after “cent”:

Cent Vingt cinq – 125

Cent douze – 112 (remember that number because it’s the emergency number in Europe)

Cent soixante et un – 161

Etc…

Be careful about higher numbers though:

Mille means a thousand.

Un million means one million.

Un milliard means a billion.

Un billion means a trillion.

Section 1: Introduction to the French language

Lecture 1: Introduction

Hello and welcome to this course! Thank you for trusting me and buying the course. I worked hard on it to make sure you get a quality education. This course is meant for english speakers with zero notion of french or people who would like to be able to find everything they need on their own and be more independent. I will not teach you grammar deeply or how to conjugate complex verbs, it’s more of a course to teach you the basics, like numbers, prounouns and in general, see if you like the French language and help you decide if you want to learn more. Also, if you’d like to be more confident and stop relying on people when travelling, this course is for you! 

This course is divided in seven sections. The first section is about the French language in general; where it’s spoken, the differences in the alphabet, the letters, the pronounciation, etc… 

The second section is about the genders, common verbs, some basic vocabulary and cultural matters. After section two, you will be able to make simple sentences and ask basic informations.

In section three, we will learn a lot of vocabulary. Now that you know how to build sentences, you need vocabulary to fill them. 

Section four will be a big step, I’ll leave you in the wild to make sure you worked enough on the previous sections. We’ll work on family, jobs, finding things, and common verbs. 

In section five, you’ll learn airport and hotel vocabulary and personal items. 

Section six will focus on understanding spoken french, common abreviations and shortened names. We'll exercise on spelling, understanding spoken informations. 

Section seven will be focused on dialogues, at the airport and the restaurant.

I recommend working on one or two lectures a day, you don’t need to rush through, practice is key in learning a language. I will work on new lectures and publish new content each month. Thank you for your trust in my course, and I hope you’ll have a great time ! Happy learning !

Link to full course documents and videos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tJ_9Xmea60YdLGHJy1lfYfzq3J2pY_eZ?usp=sharing

Lecture 2: Why learn French?

Have you ever dreamt about a super desperate situation? Like, you can’t run, you’re trapped in a speeding car, or you just landed in a french speaking country, and your only french speaker friend is gone missing, you’re on your own. All you remember is “oui oui, ca va”, you’re not going to get far. Given that over 65% of the French population does not speak a second language frequently, maybe you should learn french to avoid relying on others. There’s many benefits about speaking french :

⦁ French is the fourth most widely spoken language in the European Union.

⦁ 80 million people speak french as their mother tongue and a total of 247 million people speak french.

⦁ Knowing a second or third language can help you in your search for a job.

⦁ Believe it or not, you will make new friends and friends will always bring you social benefits.

Look at this map, this represents where you are able to communicate now as an english speaker :

English can already take you pretty far, that’s a fact. You can travel to Australia, the UK, and half the African continent. 

Now, look at this map, it represents where you’d able to communicate if you spoke French and English: 

Now you’re able to communicate in over 70% of the African continent, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Madagascar and French Islands. That’s a whole lot of new countries you’d feel comfortable in while travelling!

One day, if you worked hard enough and are able to speak on a good level, you might even be able to understand old French poetry, and that is a great reward, trust me!

I hope this course will give you motivation to learn more every day and travel to discover more places!

Lecture 3: Who am I ?

My name is Emilie, I often write it the English way. I was born in Brussels, Belgium. I currently live in the south of Belgium, in a city between Brussels and the French border. Most of my close family members are French and English speakers. I have lived in North Yorkshire for a month and attended a British college back in my teenage years. 

I’m a fan of England and English. I love poetry and music, and I’ve been making music since I was fourteen. 

I love learning and sharing what I know. Before becoming an instructor, I had a YouTube channel where I was posting translation of American hip hop songs. Due to the new laws about copyright, I had to stop. But my passion to teach never stopped. 

I started a bachelor to become a teacher and had the opportunity to teach young teenagers. I realized teaching was the best job for me. But I didn’t agree with the schools programs or the school system, so I started to work on French courses, and there I am now! I’m super happy to have you as a student. If you have any questions about me or my past work, feel free to ask!

Lecture 4: You can do it! And Google is your friend

If you think you’re going to have a hard time learning because everything looks and sounds so different, let me reassure you by giving you a couple words in French. You will easily see that it’s not that different:

“Ticket de parking”-> You probably understood everything. It means parking ticket. The order of the words is not the same, but the vocabulary is similar. The word “de” means the ticket is related to the parking. It’s like “Permis de conduire”, it means “Permit of driving”, therefore, “permis de conduire” means driving license. Please note that a ticket in French is just a receipt or a paper where a price or code is written, if you want to say you got a speeding ticket, you’ll say “J’ai eu un PV”. PV is the report that the police officer writes you when you’re caught doing illegal things.

“Restaurant végétarien” -> “restaurant”, often shortened as “restau” or “resto” means the same thing as the English word. “Végétarien” means vegetarian. The accents tell us how to pronounce the “e” letter. 

“Agent de police” -> Just like we’ve seen with “ticket de parking”, the “de” word links “agent” and “police”. This means an agent of the police, a police officer.

“Bus scolaire” -> this one may be a little harder. You know what a bus is, and the word “scolaire” sounds like scholar, it’s related to school. “Bus scolaire” means school bus. If you have studied latin, it will be super helpful in understanding the structure of French words.

“Caméra digitale”-> You got it, it’s a digital camera. The “e” at the end of “digitale” means that the word “camera” is feminine. If we wanted to say digital phone, it would be “téléphone digital”, no “e” because “téléphone” is a masculine word.

See? There’s a ton of words you won’t have to study, because they’re similar to English words.

If you’re not sure about the pronunciation of a word, Google Translator is your friend. While you’re in Google, just type Google Translator or Google Trad and type the French word you want to hear. When you’re done typing, just hit the speaker logo and a lovely lady will read the word for you. Make sure to select French as the input language. 

Section 2 : Basic vocabulary and grammar

Lecture 1: The alphabet and its pronounciation

You’re lucky! If you learn French, you don’t have to learn a new alphabet. But you’ll have to learn the difference in the pronunciation of the letters. If you simply take a look at a French computer keyboard, you’ll already notice a major difference: Our first row is called AZERTY, while English keyboards have QWERTY instead. Since I spend most of my time writing in English, I bought a QWERTY keyboard. 

Still looking at the keyboard, you’ll notice we have accents on letters like “u”, “a” and “e”. We also have two different versions of the letter “c”, but don’t worry, as soon as you learn the rule about accents, you’ll never make a mistake. 

Once you’re done spotting the differences, we can go the pronunciation part of the lecture. You will quickly notice every time it’s pronounced in a different way than the English alphabet

A – B – C – D – E – F – G - H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z.

About 5 or 6 letters are pronounced like in English. I’d like to highlight the difficulties of some letters of the French alphabet:

The letter “G” sounds like the “jay” part of “Jay-Z”. It is super confusing to English speakers because the French “G” sounds like the English “J”, don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. 

Fun fact: The letter “G” is frequently use in texts to shorten the “j’ai” (meaning “I have” or in French), because it’s pronounced the same way. In English, it’s the letter U that is used to shorten “you”, same thing. 

The letter “I” is a really short letter, unlike the “I” sound in English. 

The “J” letter sounds like the “je” part of the word “Jesus”. Just drop the “d” sound and you’re good to go. Since some French speakers have trouble with “J” and “G” too, you might hear French speakers say that “David Guetta is the best French “Diji” ”. Please don’t laugh, they’re really trying their best.

While the “K” letter is pronounced “kay” in English, it’s pronounced like “kah” in French.

Depending on your accent, the letter “O” sounds similar.

“Q” is pretty similar in both languages, except our “Q” is a little shorter. Fun fact: This letter is used to shorten the word “cul”, pronounced the same way, which means “butt”.

“R” is a really hard sound. The English “R” as we learn it sounds more like a “W”. You’ll have to pull the Spanish out of you to pronounce this “R” right, but do not roll your tongue, the sound of the “R” is right in the middle. 

The “W” in French literally means “double v”, in English, you pronounce it like “double u”. We looked at the letter and said, “yep it’ two letters “V” put next to each other, so double v”.

The “Y” letter is pronounced “I grec” which means “greek I”. In Dutch, it’s pronounced Upsilon. Every language family seems to see this letter differently.

If you are Canadian or know the pronunciation of the alphabet by a Canadian, you’ll notice we say “Z” the same way. 

Don’t worry, if you’re ever in trouble with spelling something in French, you can still pull the “Charlie” card by giving your letter and a word to confirm it. Example:

“C comme Charlie”, “S comme Sierra”, “F comme Foxtrot”. Just like the way the police identifies car tags over their radio.

Now that you’re familiar with the alphabet, we’ll see how it’s divided. In French, there’s twenty-six letters, six are vowels and twenty consonants:

A, E, I, O, U and Y are vowels. The rest of the alphabet are consonants.

Lecture 2: Months and days

Okay, now you’ve mastered the alphabet, let’s learn some vocabulary! You will need the basics first, months, days and numbers. Take your time with your learning, don’t rush and finish everything in 10 minutes. If you need to hear something again, you can go back in time using the navigation bar on the video player. Let’s start with the days first. If you know a little bit of Italian, you’ll see it sounds pretty similar.

LUNDI – MONDAY

Do you know that “huh” sound Kanye West makes on some of his songs, that’s your Monday sound! The “LUN” part is long, and the end of the word is short. The “di” sound is always short when you’re talking about days.

MARDI – TUESDAY

Do not forget what I said about the letter “R”, pronunciation is important. If you do not say the “R” letter right, you’ll always make the mistake.

MERCREDI – WEDNESDAY

This one is a little harder because you’re facing three weird letters put together: “RCR”. Think of the English word “recruit” and remove the “e”, that how “RCR” should sound.

JEUDI – THURSDAY

This one is a little easier, do not forget that the “jeu” sound has to be longer than the “di”. Fun fact about Jeudi, we often joke online about Star Wars using the word Jeudi, because it’s similar to “Jedi”. We often say “the return of the Jeudi”

VENDREDI – FRIDAY

The first part of the word “ven”, is pronounced slowly and the rest of the word is quick.

SAMEDI – SATURDAY

The letter “e” is not clearly pronounced here. 

DIMANCHE – SUNDAY

The combination of the letters “CH” turns into a “sh” sound, like in “sharp”. The ending “e” is usually dropped when speaking fast.

Let’s start talking about months now, you’ll see, some months are similar to English.

JANVIER – JANUARY

The “ier” is pronounced like a quick “yay”, so it should sound like “janv-yay”

FÉVRIER – FEBRUARY

Février has an acute accent on the “e”, which means it’s not a regular “e”. Same thing goes for the “ier” sound, it’s “févr-yay”. In some regions, the “I” is more pronounced, so it sounds like “févri-yay”.

MARS – MARCH

This one is pronounced just like a Mars candy bar, except the “A” sounds more like the French “A”. Do not forget to pronounce the “s” at the end of the word.

AVRIL – APRIL

Just like Avril Lavigne, but more Frenchy.

MAI – MAY

This one sounds 90% like the English word.

JUIN – JUNE

This “uin” sound can be difficult to pronounce, so focus and repeat it again.

JUILLET – JULY

This one is pronounced like “joo-wi-yay”

AOUT – AUGUST

The “a” is not pronounced here.

SEPTEMBRE – SEPTEMBRE

OCTOBRE - OCTOBER

NOVEMBRE - NOVEMBER

DÉCEMBRE – DECEMBER

The last four months are easier to write and remember, be careful to work on the pronunciation though.

Lecture 3: Numbers

Okay, big step ahead! Numbers… they’re not super easy, but at least they’re repetitive. There’s an easy method to remember everything. You have to learn numbers from one to a hundred first. Once you know your numbers, you just need to add other numbers to talk about one thousand, two thousand, etc… The numbers in French have the same structure as English numbers. In Dutch for example, it’s different, here’s how it works:

So, you’ll be fine, just make sure to practice every day. First, let’s look at zero to ten.

Zero – Not pronounced the English way, it’s “zay-ro”

Un – Let’s use the Kanye sound again, “huh”

Deux – The combination of “eu” sound like “huh”, the “x” at the end of the word is silent.

Trois – The “s” is silent

Quatre – The “qua” is pronounced like “kah”. If you really want to speak properly, don’t forget the “e” at the end, even though most French speakers will drop it.

Cinq – The “cinq” almost sounds like “sunk”.

Six – The “x” is pronounced as an “s”, so it’s “sis”.

Sept – The “p” is silent, so just say it like “set”

Huit – The “h” is silent here, so it sounds like “witt”. If you pronounce it the right way, it will actually sound like you’re starting to whistle.

Neuf – This one sounds like it’s written, “neuff”.

Dix – Once again the “x” sounds like an “s”.

From now on, it’s pretty simple. But I have to warn you before we start, the people from France have a weird way of counting over the number sixty. I will explain it later. It’s your choice if you’d rather learn the Belgian way of counting. Let’s continue with numbers from eleven to ninety-nine.

Onze, Douze, Treize, Quatorze, Quinze, Seize

From here, you can see a pattern in the words: It becomes “dix” (ten) and the number associated: 17 is 10+7, 18 is 10+8, etc…

Dix-sept, Dix-huit, Dix-neuf, Vingt

Now you know that « vingt » means twenty. Once again, there’s a pattern. It goes on until sixty.

Vingt

Vingt et un

Vingt-deux

Vingt-trois

Vingt-quatre

Vingt-cinq

Vingt-six

Vingt-sept

Vingt-huit

Vingt-neuf Trente

Trente et un

Trente-deux

Trente-trois

Trente-quatre

Trente-cinq

Trente-six

Trente-sept

Trente-huit

Trente-neuf

Quarante

Quarante et un

Quarante-deux

Quarante-trois

Quarante-quatre

Quarante-cinq

Quarante-six

Quarante-sept

Quarante-huit

Quarante-neuf

Cinquante

Cinquante et un

Cinquante-deux

Cinquante-trois

Cinquante-quatre

Cinquante-cinq

Cinquante-six

Cinquante-sept

Cinquante-huit

Cinquante-neuf

Soixante

Soixante et un

Soixante-deux

Soixante-trois

Soixante-quatre

Soixante-cinq

Soixante-six

Soixante-sept

Soixante-huit

Soixante-neuf

Okay, you’re still in the safe zone about numbers, please welcome seventy, pronounced like sixty-ten. Then it goes on, sixty-eleven, sixty-twelve, etc… Please stick to one method, either the French one or the Belgian one, there’s no need to learn both or try to blend in using the French way unless you’re a spy. Belgians understand the French numbers and Frenchies understand the Belgian way. The way you talk will just give away information on whether you’re a native French speaker or not. If someone tells you a number using the way you don’t usually use, repeat it using your method and check if you’re talking about the same numbers.

Soixante-dix  

Soixante et onze 

Soixante-douze 

Soixante-treize 

Soixante-quatorze 

Soixante-quinze  

Soixante-seize 

Soixante-dix-sept

Soixante-dix-huit

Soixante-dix-neuf 

Fun fact: Some people from Switzerland say “octante” or “huitaine” to talk about the number eighty. French say “quatre-vingts” to say eighty. It literally means “four times twenty”. After quatre-vingts, you add one, two, three, etc… Once you reached eighty nine, you get back to that weird pattern and go eighty ten, eighty eleven, etc…

Quatre-vingts 

Quatre-vingt-un 

Quatre-vingt-deux 

Quatre-vingt-trois 

Quatre-vingt-quatre  

Quatre-vingt-cinq 

Quatre-vingt-six 

Quatre-vingt-sept 

Quatre-vingt-huit

Quatre-vingt-neuf Quatre-vingt-dix 

Quatre-vingt-onze  

Quatre-vingt-douze 

Quatre-vingt-treize 

Quatre-vingt-quatorze 

Quatre-vingt-quinze 

Quatre-vingt-seize 

Quatre-vingt-dix-sept 

Quatre-vingt-dix-huit 

Quatre-vingt dix-neuf 

Alright, you can breathe for a minute, you just learned the hardest part of it. Congrats! Now let’s get to one hundred and above. It’s much simpler, trust me. 

Cent – Means one hundred. 

If you want to count over one hundred, just add the desired number after “cent”:

Cent Vingt cinq – 125

Cent douze – 112 (remember that number because it’s the emergency number in Europe)

Cent soixante et un – 161

Etc…

Be careful about higher numbers though:

Mille means a thousand.

Un million means one million.

Un milliard means a billion.

Un billion means a trillion.

Lecture 4: Geography and accents

You probably know that a language has many different dialects. French from Belgium and French from the Southside of France are different. Also, just in case things weren’t complicated enough, there’s a lot of regions where people speak French and another language. Look at the map below, it’s a simplified explanation of different languages spoken in officially French speaking countries.  

In the Brussels region, most people speak French or Dutch. I added English as a third language because many European Commission members work there and speak English fluently. You can see that the northern part of Belgium, called Flanders, is not in green, it’s because the main language is Flemish. Flemish is the name given to the Dutch language spoken by citizens of Flanders. Usually, Belgians living in the North are pretty good with English, and you can easily communicate with them.

Since Belgium and France have common borders with Germany, citizens living near the border speak German. Belgium has an official community of German citizens and has adopted German as the third official language. In France, some people living in Alsace can speak French and Alsatian. It’s a mix of French and German. A big part of France used to belong to Germany during the war, it explains the massive influence of German on French in Alsace. 

Same thing goes for French citizens living near Spain, Italy or Switzerland, the country always has an influence on the French language. In the north of France, people speak with an accent that sounds like South Wallonia French.

Fun fact: for many years, Flanders and Wallonia have been fighting over Brussels. Geographically speaking, it’s in the Flanders territory, but the majority of Brussels citizens are French speakers.

Section 3 : Let’s speak ! 

Lecture 1: How to introduce yourself 

When someone talks to you, you’re expecting them to be polite, especially if you give them helpful advice or help them get somewhere. You’d be upset if someone just asked you for something and then stormed off without saying thank you. You’d also be super embarassed to ask something in French without knowing how to thank or greet people. That’s why I’m about to teach you how to introduce yourself and be a lovely foreigner!

Introducing yourself requires a minimal knowledge about french verbs and how to conjugate them, we’ll briefly see four important verbs, have, be, look for and going.

Let’s start with the personal pronouns first :

Je/J’ – « je » or « j’ » depending on the verb following, means “I”. The rule about je and j’ai is simple. If the verb following start with a vowel, the je become j’. Let me show you some examples:

“Je mange” -> The pronoun does not change because the following verb doesn’t start with a vowel.

“J’arrive” -> The verb “arriver” starts with a vowel, therefore you need to shorten the je to avoid a weird sound.

“J’entends” -> The verb “entendre” starts with a vowel, so you need to shorten the je.

Usually, if you mess up and use the wrong pronoun, it will sound weird and you’ll know you made a mistake. Until you’re totally comfortable with the first prounoun, don’t hesitate to practice and speak with native french speakers, they’ll correct you. You can also listen carefully when it’s their time to speak, so you can master the first person pronoun.

Tu – means you. I hear a lot of learners pronounce this one wrong all the time. Once you pick the habit, you’ll always say it wrong, so please listen to it carefully and repeat it until you get it right. Tu is the friendly way to talk to someone you know, if you don’t know personnaly someone, or if you’re talking to an employer, your boss, or anyone with more power than you, you need to use the polite form, “vous”. There’s a chart online to help you determinate if you should use “tu” or “vous”, since it’s pretty complicated, I’ll shorten it and explain it to you :

⦁ If you’re talking to a child, use “tu” unless the child is a member of a royal family or related to a country leader. 

⦁ If you’re talking to an adult who’s a part of your family, use “tu”. If the adult is family from super far in the family tree, use “vous” until the person says it’s okay if you use “tu”. When talking to retired people, usually use “vous”

⦁ If you’re about to talk to an adult stranger on the street, use “vous” (example: when you’re about to ask directions) and always say “excusez-moi” before asking anything. 

⦁ If you’re speaking to your lover, close friend, husband, wife, use “tu”.

⦁ If you’re talking to the family of your lover/husband/wife, use “vous” and then ask if it’s okay if everybody uses the friendly form. Usually people will feel embarassed and politely ask you to stop using the polite form.

⦁ If you’re talking to a president, your boss, the waiter, waitress, a teacher, or the seller in a shop, use “vous”, unless they’re close to you, of course.

⦁ In general, if you’re not sure, use “vous” until the other person uses “tu” and says “tu peux me tutoyer”-> it’s not really translatable but it basically says “you can call me with the “tu” “

⦁ Look around, if people use the friendly form to talk to everyone, just do the same thing.

⦁ Don’t be mad if a kid uses the friendly form with you, they usually don’t learn the difference before age 9 or 10.

Il/Elle/On – “Il” stands for him and “elle” means she. The pronoun “on” is used to talk about a group of people but it’s considered singular. Example: On mange ensemble means “we’re eating together”, the “on” represents the group, and you can replace the “on” with “il” ou “elle” and it will still be correct. “il” can also be used to represent something else than a person, for example, “il pleut”, meaning it’s raining. It’s what we call “un-personal”. Another example, “il fait beau” means the weather is good.

Nous – is the french version of we. Nothing special about this one

Vous – Is either the polite version of “tu” or a way to talk about multiple people, just like the English you.

Ils/Elles – This one is a little tricky. “ils” means they when talking about boys. “Elles” means you’re talking about a group of girls. There’s one thing : What do you say when it’s a group with boys and girls? If there’s at least one boy in the group, it’s automatically “ils”. Meaning that if you have a group of nine girls and one boy, it’s gonna be “ils”. Boys always win with verbs (that’s the real rule we’re taught at school).

Now that you know your pronouns, we can start learning verbs. Let’s start with “to be”, so you’ll be able to introduce yourself.

To tell someone who you are, there’s two ways, either say “hi, my name is…” or say “hi, I am…”. We’ll learn both ways. You usually introduce yourself by giving your first name and your last name. Let’s learn some vocabulary you’ll need:

Prénom – First name

This is your first name. I’ll do it for me : Je m’appelle Emilie. Emilie est mon prénom.

Nom (de famille) – Last name (Family name)

This is your last name. I’ll do it for me again: Mon nom de famille est Schrevens. Mon nom est Emilie Schrevens. If someone asks you “quel est ton nom” (friendly form) ou “quel est votre nom?” (polite form), then you have to give your full name.

Age – Age 

In English and Dutch, when you want to give your age, you use the verb “to be”. In French, you’ll say “I have 20 years old”. Example: Bonjour, mon nom est Emilie, j’ai 21 ans”.

An(s) – Year(s)

In French, we just use “an” to say year and “ans” to say years. We don’t use another word like in Dutch and English.

S’appeler – To be named 

It’s the other way to introduce yourself, you can say my name is… “Je m’appelle Emilie”

Instead of saying “I am John” you can say “my name is John”.

Etre – To be

Avoir – To have

Let’s start to conjugate some verbs !

Etre – To be

Je suis

Tu es

Il est

Elle est

Nous sommes

Vous êtes

Ils sont

Elles sont

Avoir – To have

J'ai

Tu as

Il a 

Elle a

Nous avons

Vous avez

Ils ont

Elles ont

There’s no special trick to remember them, you just have to study them. Please be careful not to mistake “ils sont” et “ils ont”.

Now let’s practice a little bit once you’re done studying. 

Lecture 2: Being polite

Okay, it’s now time to learn how to be polite and what words to use when greeting someone. You could totally survive a conversation with :

“-ca va? 

-ca va et toi?

-Ca va, ca va.”

But it’s not interesting at all. Instead, let’s learn how to greet someone.

If you’re about to talk to a stranger or someone who seems busy with something, just say “Excusez moi” to get their attention. 

“Un moment s’il vous plait“ is what people tell you if they’re busy for a short amount of time. They could also say “un instant s’il vous plait”.

Use “Merci” to thank someone and “merci beaucoup” to thank someone a lot.

“S’il vous plait” can be used to call a stranger, usually to tell them something like “hey you dropped your walled”. It also means please but depending on the tone you use, it can mean “hey I have something to tell you and I don’t know your name”. In the US and UK, I noticed people tend to call strangers using sir, miss, or madam.

“Bonjour” is the equivalent to “good morning”. Stop using it after 6PM or as soon as it’s dark outside. If it’s the evening, use “bonsoir”. We have a deep fear to be using the wrong word and be corrected by the other person, so either use whatever word the other person used or use the word depending on the time.

“A plus” is the friendly way to say “see you next time”, only use it if you’re close to the person you’re talking to.

“Bisous”is the equivalent to the english Xoxo or XXX, it means kisses and should only be used with people you know well. It’s not really a way to end a conversation, it’s mostly used in texts or when writing a post card to a close person.

“Salut” is the formal way to say hi to someone. It can also be used to say goodbye.

“Tu vas bien?“ can be translated to “are you doing okay?”. It’s used when talking to someone you haven’t seen in a while. Kind of like “how is life doing?”

“Comment tu vas?“ is the friendly form to ask someone “how are you?”

“Comment allez-vous ?“ is the polite form of “comment tu vas?”

“Vous allez bien ? “ usually used when you want to ask someone if they’re okay right after something happened or it can also be used to greet someone, it’s usually used right when you’re shaking someone’s hand.

“Ca va ? “ is used to ask someone if they’re okay. It’s considered okay to ask “ca va?” to strangers.

“Vous aussi“ is usually used when someone gives you success wishes. You might be tempted to use it when someone says “take care” but it’s not pretty common.

“Que faites vous“ is used when someone is asking you what do you do in life. They’re expecting an answer like “I work at this company”, “I’m an engineer” or “I’m independent”, they’re asking about your professionnal life.

“Je travaille a“ is the sentence you should use to tell someone where you work. You can only add a city. Example : “Je travaille a Miami”. It’s meant to designate your work location, not the name of your company. You can’t say “Je travaille a Facebook“, that’s incorrect.

“Je travaille chez“ is the sentence you should use to tell someone who you work for. Example : “Je travaille chez Facebook“ or “Je travaille chez Nintendo“

“Je suis en vacances“, that means you’re on holiday, don’t say that when someone asks you about your job, that’s rude.

“Je suis de/je viens de“ is used to tell the other person where you’re from. You can say “California”, “Los Angeles” or even the name of your hood: “Je viens de Hollywood Boulevard”

“J’habite a“ same thing as “je viens de“ except you have to be more specific when answering. 

“Bonsoir“ is what you use when you want to say hi in the everning.

“Bonne nuit” is the equivalent to good night.

Alright ! You’re ready to be alone in the french speaking jungle ! I’ll see you in the next lecture to talk about gender, this is a big chapter so please pay extra attention.

Lecture 3: Gender

Now that you know how to form basic phrases, it’s time to fill them with some useful vocabulary. You may be aware that nouns have a gender in French, it can be tough to learn and you need to do the same thing every time you learn a new word : study the genre of that word. Knowing the gender of nouns is super important in French, because it determines the choice of prounon, the adjective following and it can influence the verb.

99 percent of the time, there’s no easy rule to remember the gender of a noun. The only way to know is to study carefully and always remember the gender when you check a word in the dictionnary. 

I’m going to give you a few rules to recognize the gender of nouns :

“Une belle maison“

“Un bel appartement“

We’re going to focus on the adjective “bel” that you can see. It’s written in different forms, the one with just “BEL” and the one with “BELLE”, if you see that the consonant has been doubled and that an -e was added afterwards, then it’s a feminine noun.

Maison is a feminine noun, and appartement in masculine.

Let’s take another example :

“Le match est amusant”

“L’activité est amusante”

You can see that the adjective “amusant“ had an -e added in the second sentence, so you can spot the difference now, “match” is a masculine noun and “activité” is a feminine noun. 

Let’s look at another example :

“Le dessin est coloré”

“La peinture est colorée”

Can you tell the gender of “dessin” and “peinture” ?

There’s important rules you have to remember : 

⦁ If you’re talking about a man or a male animal, it’s always going to be masculine.

⦁ If you’re talking about a woman or a female animal, it’s always going to be feminine.

⦁ Country names are genereally feminine if they end with -e.

⦁ Colombie, France, Belgique, Suisse, Allemagne…

⦁ River and mountain names can be feminine or masculine, you’ll have to study them since there’s no way to tell their gender.

Just like in English, there’s different names for animals depending on the gender, let’s see some example :

Lion – Lionne

Chien – Chienne

Tigre – Tigresse

Ane – Anesse

If you encounter these words before the noun:

⦁ La

⦁ Une

⦁ Cette

You know the noun is feminine.

If you encounter these words :

⦁ Le

⦁ Un

⦁ Ce/cet

You know the noun is masculine.

The conclusion to this section is, study hard when you see nouns, and at some point you will be able to know if it sounds weird when you mess up with the gender.

Lecture 4: Asking questions

Being able to ask questions the right way might save you if you are in trouble and need assistance. We’ll learn the interrogative words and their translation, I will also provide an example so you can understand better how they’re used.

Comment – How

“Comment fais-tu ceci?” – How do you do this?

Pourquoi – Why

“Pourquoi le four est allumé?” – Why is the oven on ?

Que – What

“Que fais-tu?” – What are you doing ? 

Qui – Who

“Qui est la?“ – Who is there?

Quand – When

“Quand viens-tu?” – When are you coming?

Quel(s)/Quelle(s) – What

“Quel job as-tu?” – What job do you have?

“Quelle est la fonction de ce bouton?” – What’s the purpose of this button ?

Combien – How much / how many

“Combien coute le pain?” – How much does the bread cost?

“Combien de personnes sont la?” – How many people are there ?

Ou – Where

“Ou sont les jeux de console ?“ – Where are the console games ?

There’s two main ways to ask a question in French, either use all the words in normal order and use your tone to make people understand you’re asking a question. Let me give you an example:

“Mike is home?” – Mike est a la maison?

“Someone called this morning?” – Quelqu’un a appelé ce matin?

The other way is to switch the words, just like in English, when you say :

“is Mike home?” – Est-ce que Mike est a la maison?

“Did someone call this morning?” – Est-ce que quelqu’un a appelé ce matin?

Same thing as in English, except that you will have to use question words, mostly “est-ce que”, let me show you some examples:

“Est-ce que Julie est la?” – Is Julie there ?

“Est-ce que tu peux me passer le sel?” – Can you pass me the salt ?

Section 4: Vocabulary and verbs

Bottom of Form

Lecture 1: Family vocabulary

Now is time to fill your head with basic but useful vocabulary. First, we’ll complete what we already know with vocabulary about jobs and family.

Let’s start with the family, I will provide the gender of every word, don’t forget to study the gender too.

La mère / La maman

Le père / Le papa

Le bébé

La sœur 

Le frère

Le mari / L’époux

La femme / L’épouse

Le fils

La fille

Le beau-fils

La belle-fille

Grand père / Papi / Papy

Grand mère / Mamie / Mamy The mother / mom

The father / dad

The baby

The sister

The brother

The husband

The wife / spouse

The son

The daughter

The step-son

The step-daughter

The Grandfather 

The Grandmother

If the gender is feminine, use “ma” when talking about a family member. If the gender is masculine, use “mon”, look at these examples to understand better :

“Mon grand-père est docteur“

“Ma fille est dentiste“

Lecture 2: Jobs vocabulary

Now let’s learn a couple jobs names that you might need to use.

Le médecin / Le docteur

Un infirmier / Une infirmière

Le professeur

Le/La guide (touristique)

Le vendeur / La vendeuse

Le serveur / La serveuse

Le/la secrétaire

Le/la dentiste

Le directeur / La directrice

L’étudiant / L’étudiante

The doctor 

(« docteur » just means someone with a doctorate, but it can be used to talk about a regular health doctor)

The nurse

The teacher

The guide (tourist guide)

The shop seller 

(not used to talk about the owner of the shop)

The waiter / the waitress

The secretary

The dentist

The director 

The student (any age). French people don’t use different student names depending on the year they’re in. 

You can now form phrases to talk about yourself or your family :

“Je suis un médecin”, “Ma soeur est secrétaire”, “Mon fils est dentiste”, etc…

Lecture 3: Common verbs

Now that you have a strong vocabulary, it’s time to discover more verbs in order to form new phrases.

Venir

Je viens

Tu viens

II/Elle vient

Nous venons

Vous venez

Ils/Elles viennent You can use this verb to explain where you’re from. Remember, we learned the sentence “je suis de Miami”, when you use the verb “venir”, it means you litteraly come from a certain place. By saying “Je suis de Miami et je viens de Paris”, you say that you were born or live in Miami but you just came back from Paris. 

Chercher

Je cherche

Tu cherches

II/Elle cherche

Nous cherchons

Vous cherchez

 Ils/Elles cherchent You can use this verb to say you’re looking for a person, an object, or a place. For example :

“je cherche la gare”

“Ma fille cherche un restaurant”

“Nous cherchons un hotel“

Aller

Je vais

Tu vas

II/Elle va

Nous allons

Vous allez

 Ils/Elles vont This verb is a little special, it represents the action to go from one point to another, and it can also be used to talk about yourself. When you say “je vais bien”, you mean you’re doing good. Let’s see some examples :

“Je vais au magasin”

“Ils vont manger”

Habiter

J’habite 

Tu habites

Il/Elle habite

Nous habitons

Vous habitez

Ils/Elles habitent This verb is used to explain where you live, nothing complicated. Don’t forget that the first pronoun in shortened because you can’t have two vowel sounds following each other. If you want to say you live at someone’s place, use “chez”, to say you live with someone, use “avec”, if you want to name a place, use “a”. Some examples:

“J’habite chez ma soeur”

“Nous habitons a Miami”

“Ma maman habite avec mon papa“

Manger

Je mange

Tu manges

Il/Elle mange

Nous mangeons

Vous mangez

Ils/Elles mangent This verb is pretty simple. You just use it to say you’re eating something. Just add the name of the food after the verb :

“Je mange une pomme”

“Ils mangent des frites”

“Nous mangeons des moules“

Boire

Je bois

Tu bois

Il/Elle boit

Nous buvons

Vous buvez

Ils/Elles boivent This one is also pretty simple. Just remember that “nous buvons” et “vous buvez” are slightly different because the “o” is missing.

Section 5: 100 %Vocabulary

Lecture 1: Airport and airplane vocabulary

Now that you know how to say you’re looking for people, items or places, we can start more complex phrases. First, we’ll need to learn new vocabulary about places and personal items.

At the airport

Un avion Airplane

Une porte d’embarquement Boarding gate

Une rangée Row (in the plane)

Un siege/une place Seat 

Un bagage/Une valise Luggage 

Les objets perdus Lost and found items

Un/une pilote Pilot

Un ticket / des documents d’embarquement Boarding pass (boarding documents)

Un magasin Shop

Une urgence Emergency

Annulé Cancelled

Une sortie de secours Emergency exit

Un pays Country

Un gilet de secours Life jacket

Une piste Runway

Une ceinture Seatbelt

Décoller / Décollage Taking off / Takeoff

Atterir / Atterissage Landing 

Un passeport Passport

En retard Late

Une carte d’identité ID card

Lecture 2 : Hotel vocabulary

At the hotel

Une réception Reception, check-in desk

Une clé Key

Une navette Shuttle

Des charges Charges or fees

Une formule Formula

Un déjeuner Breakfast

Un diner Dinner

Un souper Supper

Une femme de ménage Maid

Non-fumeur Non-smoking

Un lit Bed

Un oreiller Pillow

Le service de chambre Room service

Un ascenseur Lift/Elevator

Un pourboire Tip

Just one thing before you keep learning new words, the name of meals is different in France and Belgium, look at the table below to understand better.

Lecture 3: Your personal items

Personal items

Un portefeuille A wallet

Un sac A bag (any type of bag)

Un sac a dos A bagpack

Un parapluie An umbrella

Des papiers d’identité Your personal identification documents (passport, ID card, bank cards)

Les vetements Clothes

Un sac a main A handbag

Un manteau / une veste A jacket (for both men and women)

Lecture 4: Places

Places in general

L’hotel The hotel

La banque The bank

L’aeroport The airport

L’arret de bus The bus stop

Le métro The subway (also called RER in France)

La gare The station

Le bar The bar

Le restaurant The restaurant

La poste The post office

Un parking taxi The taxi parking

Un hopital The hospital

Un cinéma The cinema

Un théatre The theater

Un supermarché The supermarket

Une voiture The car

Une université The university

Une bibliotheque The library

L’office du tourisme The tourist office

Lecture 5: Bar and restaurant

Bar and restaurant

Commander Order

Une commande An order

Un dessert A dessert

Le serveur The waiter

La serveuse The waitress

L’addition The bill

Le chef cuistot The cook

La carte / Le menu The menu

Végétarien Vegetarian 

« Veuillez attendre d’etre placés » “please wait to be seated” 

Le pourboire The tip

It’s important to leave tips. In France and Belgium, you don’t have to write on the bill to let the waiter know how much you’re giving. People usually leave 1 to 5 euros per person. You also have to consider how many waiters served you. If there was 2 or more, consider giving more than a couple euros. If you’re not satisfied by the service, you’re allowed to go without leaving a tip, but the staff will remember it. It’s pretty rude so consider leaving a good tip.

Section 6: Let’s focus on letters

Lecture 1: Common abreviations and shortened names

French abreviation Full word Translation

CHR Centre Hospitalier Regional Regional hospital

CHU Centre Hospitalier Universitaire University hospital

(if you’re having an emergency, don’t waste time trying to look for a university hospital, the name doesn’t mean much)

FR France Well, France

BE Belgique Belgium

RATP Régie autonome des transports parisiens The transport system of Paris

RER Réseau express régional Express transport system (by region)

SNCB Société nationale des chemins de fer belges Society in charge of the train transportation in Belgium

SNCF Société nationale des chemins de fer francais Society in charge of the train transportation in France

Biz Bisous Kisses

UE Union Européenne European union

AIRCO Air conditionné AC

GN Gendarmerie nationale National police (France have the “gendarmerie” and the “police”, different names, different missons)

GIGN Groupe d’intervention de la gendarmerie nationale French version of the SWAT. If you see them and are not able to understand their orders, let them know you speak another language and keep your hands visible.

BRI Brigade de recherches et d’intervention Special brigade for research and intervention. They’re more into terrorist stuff nowadays.

OTAN / NATO

 Lecture 2: Spelling

Time to go back to the alphabet and numbers and make sure you’re ready to spell things when asked to. To make sure you’re able to spell things correctly, you will have to send me a recording of you spelling a couple things, so I can check if you’re good with the alphabet. If you can’t send me a file, it’s okay, you don’t really have to. You can practice on your own by rewatching the lecture about the alphabet or talking with french speakers. If you do not send the audio file or do any of the homeworks, it will not affect your percentage of completion and you will still receive your certificate of completion after you’ve watched all the lectures.

Okay, if you’d like to do the exercise, you can follow the instructions : 

⦁ Set your webcam or camera to record yourself

⦁ Spell your name or any random english name

⦁ Spell your birth date or any random birth date

⦁ Spell the name of your city or any random city

⦁ Spell the name of random animal you like.

⦁ Send the recording to ⦁ [email protected] and write “spelling test” as subject.

⦁ Wait for my feedback, you can start working on the next lecture if ou want to !

If you’re not comfortable with being filmed, you can just keep the audio and send it. Don’t forget to write down what you spelled in the video, so I can compare it. Your email should look like this :

Lecture 3: Writing down information

Now is the time to check if you’re comfortable with understanding a french speaker spelling letters. There will be a quiz after this lecture, where you’ll be able to enter the letters you understood, so please take a piece of paper and a pencil before we start the exercise. You can go back using the video player, but please try to do it without pausing or going back. If you want to hear it, paste the following in Google translation, hit French and listen !

Okay, are you ready? Let’s go!

Mon prénom est Monique, M-O-N-I-Q-U-E. 

Mon prénom est Damien, D-A-M-I-E-N.

J’habite en France, mon code postal est 16-21-11, 16-21-11, ou bien 1-6-2-1-1-1.

J’habite en Provence, cela s’écrit P-R-O-V-E-N-C-E.

Je suis née en 1975, MILLE NEUF CENT SEPTANTE CINQ, ou 1-9-7-5

Section 7: Let’s dialogue

It’s time for you to hear full sentences spoken by native french speakers. I will talk as person A and a male actor will play as person B. Pay attention to the dialogue, as you will be asked questions about it later. You can change the speed of the video on the bottom of the screen. Get ready ! The first dialogue will be about a problem at the airport and the second one will happen at the restaurant.

Lecture 1: Dialogue at the airport

A – Bonjour, je suis Laura.

B – Bonjour, je suis Damien

A – Je cherche le guichet des objets perdus.

B – Vous etes aux objets perdus. Est-ce que vous avez perdu un objet ?

A – J’ai perdu ma veste.

B – Okay, je vais chercher votre veste, un instant s’il vous plait.

A – Merci beaucoup.

B – Est-ce que c’est une veste avec un numéro ?

A – Oui, sur ma veste, il y a écrit « 1-8-8-4 »

B – J’ai trouvé la veste !

A – Merci ! 

B – De rien, bonne journée

A – Bonne journée a vous !

Lecture 2: Dialogue at the restaurant

A – Bonsoir !

B – Bonsoir !

A – Je cherche une table, nous sommes deux personnes.

B – Oui, suivez-moi s’il vous plait.

A – Oui.

B – Voila, est-ce que ca va ici ?

A – Oui, merci beaucoup. Nous venons pour un dessert

B – Est-ce que vous voulez la carte ?

A – Oui, merci.

B – Voila.

A – Nous allons prendre 2 tiramisus, merci.

Lecture 3: Conclusion

Thank you very much for watching all the lectures and congratulations for completing this course ! Please make sure to leave an honest review about the course and thanks again ! 

Introduction to the course : What to expect and how it works