TodayWeeksReviewPracticePhrases

Standard European French

Half of it is silent. Ninety days to hear the rest.

Ninety days, fifteen minutes each. Read one week at a time, say everything out loud, and come back each day for a short review of the words you have met. French hides half of what it writes, so every word here can be heard as well as seen.

The weeks

Seven days each, one after another. Each day opens when the one before it is done; each week when its seventh day is. If you would rather jump, any week can be skipped to from its page.

week3
Common nouns: the home and food

Thirty-odd everyday objects, each learned together with its gender.

NounVerbPronounArticlePrepositionAdjective · newQuestion word · newFixed chunk
week4
First sentence frames: I have, I want, I would like

You stop collecting words this week and start combining them. Almost no new vocabulary — reuse Weeks 1 to 3 inside these frames.

NounVerbPronounArticlePrepositionAdjectiveAdverb · newConjunction · newQuestion wordFixed chunk

By the end of week 4 you should be able to

  • —Greet, thank, apologise, and count to twenty.
  • —Introduce yourself — name, age, town, family, retirement — in four or five sentences.
  • —Name thirty-plus everyday home and food objects, with their gender.
  • —Order a drink or a meal politely with Je voudrais, and ask for the bill.
week5
Present tense: verb patterns and high-frequency verbs

Green takes over. Three regular patterns and seven irregular workhorses — between them they carry most of everyday spoken French.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
week6
Questions: directions, prices, times

Magenta week. Seven question words, and enough fixed phrases to find a station, ask a price and understand the answer.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
week7
The past: recounting yesterday

The passé composé. Two ingredients — a helper verb and a past participle — and suddenly you can talk about anything that has already happened.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
week8
The near future, and joining sentences together

Aller plus a verb gets you the future for almost no effort. Connectors then turn a list of sentences into a story.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk

By the end of week 8 you should be able to

  • —Conjugate high-frequency verbs in the present for je, vous, il/on and nous — and recognise the tu and ils forms.
  • —Ask for directions, prices and times using the question words.
  • —Recount yesterday in the passé composé, with both avoir and être.
  • —Talk about near-future plans using aller plus an infinitive.
  • —Tell a short connected story using et, mais, parce que, alors, and d'abord / puis / après / enfin.
week9
Your own life: hobbies, health and opinions

Phase 3 stops teaching structures and starts using them. This week gives you the vocabulary to talk about yourself — which is most of what conversation actually is.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
week10
Listening: following the gist

Mostly technique rather than vocabulary. The goal this week is the gist of a clip, not every word in it — and learning to be comfortable with that is the actual skill.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
week11
Speaking: five minutes a day, out loud

Fluency over accuracy. The aim is to keep talking, not to be right — and the words that buy you thinking time are the ones that make that possible.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
week12
A real task, and everything reviewed

No new grammar. One real thing done in French, and a look back over ninety days.

NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk

By the end of week 12 you should be able to

  • —Talk about your hobbies, your health and your opinions using aimer, adorer, détester, préférer and the opinion frames.
  • —Follow the gist of a two-minute French clip using the three-step method.
  • —Deliver a five-minute monologue on the five-part scaffold, with discourse markers, without correcting yourself mid-sentence.
  • —Complete a real task in French — read a menu, write a message, or book a table.

The ninety days

Days 1–30

Foundations

Greet, introduce yourself, name everyday things, and order politely.

Days 31–60

Everyday exchanges

Hold a short two-way conversation without notes.

Days 61–90

Going it alone

Handle a real trip — travel, shops, small talk, the unexpected.

Starting later

What French will ask of you

French asks two particular things of a late starter, and both are worth naming rather than discovering the hard way. Neither is a reason to avoid it — they are the reason the course is shaped the way it is.

Gender has no rule, so it gets three cues

There is no reliable way to tell that maison is feminine and café is masculine. You memorise it or you guess. So every noun here arrives with its article, its weight or slant, and its colour all saying the same thing at once. Redundant cues are the most dependable memory aid there is, and they matter more when recall has slowed.

Half of what is written is not said

Parle, parles and parlent sound identical. Rather than drilling forms your ear will never need to separate, the course asks you to produce four of them and merely recognise the rest — which is less to hold, and closer to how the language actually behaves.

Spoken French runs words together

Liaison makes a sentence arrive as one long sound, which is harder on an ear that has lost some high-frequency acuity. Audio plays slowly by default, the speed is adjustable, and the listening weeks ask for the gist of a clip rather than every word.

The design behind this — expanding review gaps, chunking, and saying each thing more than one way — is covered on the front page, with the research it comes from. Vocabulary and knowledge hold up well with age; speed and working memory are what give way, so the course spends the first and protects the second.

Where French hides things

The vanishing article

Before a vowel or a mute h, le and la both collapse into l'. l'eau is feminine, l'hôtel is masculine, l'amie is feminine — and the article no longer tells you which. This is exactly the case the text style exists for: the slant or the bold is carrying the gender on its own.

Contracted articles

du = de + le, au = à + le, aux = à + les, des = de + les. One written word doing two grammatical jobs. They are coloured brown for the preposition and styled for the gender hiding inside.

A visible mismatch

If a slanted orange noun follows a bold grey article, something is wrong. un maison looks wrong before you have consciously worked out why — which is the whole point of running two channels at once.

The voice

Every word on the site is clickable. It speaks through a voice installed on this computer, so it costs nothing and works with the wifi off — but it does need a French voice to be installed. Without one the audio stays silent rather than read French aloud in an English accent.

[Bonjour]

Looking for voices…