How to learn French.

You pick up French by understanding lots of it, not by memorising rules about it. Study still has a job: making real French understandable sooner. Here’s the order to do it in, and where Misu fits.

Why immersion works

Every time you follow French that’s a little beyond you, you pick something up: a word, a phrase, a pattern. So the whole game is to spend as many hours as you can with French you can mostly follow, and to make more of it followable, fast.

That takes three habits: surround yourself with French, enjoy what you choose, and keep the sentences you meet. The five stages build them in order.

Stage 1: Build a foundation

Your first few weeks. The goal isn’t to master anything, just to make easy French understandable. French shares thousands of words with English, so this stage goes quickly.

Learn the sounds

French isn’t spelt the way it’s said, but its rules are few and regular. An afternoon here saves you months of guessing. Tap a word to hear it.

• -s -t -x -d Most final consonants are silent petit
• an, on, in Nasal vowels, with no n at the end le pain
• u Say ee with your lips rounded tu
• ou Like the oo in food vous
• r From the back of the throat rouge
• é, è é is like ay, è like the e in bed très
• eau, au Both say o l'eau
• oi Says wa trois

Learn the most common words

A small set of words does most of the work in any language: the same few hundred turn up in every conversation, show and book. Learn them before themed lists of animals or kitchen tools, and everything you watch and read gets easier at once.

Misu’s course is the 1,500 most common French words in 60 short lessons, each a flashcard with audio. You’ll start hearing them in real French straight away.

Already know some French? Don’t start from zero.

Skim the grammar, once

Read a short overview of French grammar to recognise the patterns, not to drill them: masculine and feminine nouns (le, la), the present tense of être, avoir and aller, negation with ne … pas, and the passé composé for the past. You’ll learn the details from French itself.

Stage 2: Immerse every day

This is where your hours go. Two kinds of immersion help:

Pick what you’d watch anyway. Fun comes first, because you’ll only keep going for months if you enjoy it. Start with videos made for learners, then move to native content as it gets easier. If you follow less than most of something, step down a level; if you follow all of it, step up.

Make your world French too: switch your phone and apps to French, follow French creators, and let YouTube recommend French videos.

Stage 3: Mine sentences and review them

When you meet a sentence where you know every word but one, save it. That’s sentence mining: the new word arrives with its context, a real sentence you understood, so it sticks far better than a word on a list.

Review what you save every day. New words fade within days unless you meet them again, and a short daily review keeps them. In Misu, the words you save from a page or a video wait in the app, where they become flashcards with audio and pictures. For books, menus and signs, scan the page with your phone and tap the word.

Keep reviews to a time you’ll actually do every day. If they start taking more than half an hour, save fewer new words for a while.

Stage 4: Start speaking

Speaking comes after plenty of listening. You can only say what you’ve heard many times, so the more you’ve listened, the more comes out.

Start early with shadowing: repeat a line of audio out loud, matching its rhythm. When easy native French feels comfortable, book a tutor or find a language exchange partner. If French speakers switch to English when they hear your accent, ask them to stay in French: it’s practice you can’t get anywhere else.

Stage 5: Polish

Now work on accuracy and fluency. Write short posts or a journal in French and have them corrected, then move to harder content: native podcasts at full speed, novels, films without subtitles. By now you’re learning French the way native speakers keep learning it.

A day of French

1. Morning

   Review your flashcards in Misu

   15 to 30 min

2. Any time

   A show, video or podcast you can mostly follow, saving a few sentences

   1 hour or more

3. Commute and chores

   French in your ears: podcasts or audio from what you’ve watched

   As much as you like

4. Twice a week, later

   A conversation with a tutor or exchange partner

   30 min

Short on time? Ten minutes of flashcards and twenty of a show you enjoy still moves you forward. Keep a tally of your hours: watching the total grow keeps you going.

Where to find French you’ll enjoy

• Watch

  YouTube videos made for French learners, sorted by level. Then French series like Lupin and Call My Agent!, with Misu for Chrome on the subtitles.

• Listen

  Podcasts for French learners first, then native podcasts on topics you like.

• Read

  Graded readers first, then news, Reddit and blogs in French, with Misu for Chrome to look words up.

• Speak

  A tutor, or an exchange partner who’s learning English. Half an hour a week is enough to start.

Mistakes that slow you down

• Reading French the way it’s spelt. Learn the sound rules first, or you’ll spend months unlearning silent letters.

• Only using an app. Lessons give you a start. Hours of real French do the rest.

• Studying grammar before you can understand much. Skim it, then let French show you how it works.

• Content that’s too hard. If you follow less than most of it, you’re not learning much from it.

• Skipping reviews. A missed week costs more than a missed day.

How long does it take to learn French?

The US Foreign Service Institute, which trains American diplomats, puts French in its quickest group for English speakers. Its students reach professional working proficiency in about 30 weeks of full-time study, with 23 hours of class and 17 of self-study each week. That’s around 1,200 hours.

With immersion, count hours of French rather than classes. An hour of a show you enjoy is easier to find than an hour of study, so the hours add up.

Is French hard to learn?

Not for English speakers. English took thousands of words from French, like restaurant, information and possible, so you know more than you think. The hard parts are spelling that doesn’t match the sound, masculine and feminine nouns, and verbs whose endings change with every person and tense. Listening every day is what stops French sounding like one long word.