How to Use

Learning French on French From Scratch is simple: follow each day's instructions carefully. The most crucial part of your learning will always be input: reading, listening, watching, and absorbing as much French as you can, consistently.

The first lessons are being written now. This page explains how they work, so you're ready for Day 1.

Reading French

French uses the Latin alphabet, so you can start on Day 1 without learning a new script. But it isn't always read the way it's spelled: the spelling keeps letters that are no longer said. A few things are worth knowing:

• Many letters at the end of a word are silent: the s of vous, the t of petit, the ending ent of ils parlent ("they speak"). An e at the end of a word is usually silent too.
• A silent last letter often comes back when the next word starts with a vowel: vous alone ends in a vowel sound, but in vous avez ("you have") its s is said as a z, joined to the next word. This is called liaison.
• Accents change a vowel: é as in café, è and ê as in mère ("mother") and fête ("party"), and ç is an s sound, as in français. Some accents only tell words apart: a ("has") and à ("to"), ou ("or") and où ("where").
• Several letters often make one sound: eau and au sound like "oh", ou like the "oo" in "food", oi like "wa", and a vowel before n or m is often said through the nose, as in bon ("good") and pain ("bread").
• Small words lose their vowel before another vowel and join the next word with an apostrophe: l'eau ("the water"), j'aime ("I like"), c'est ("it is").

That's one more reason to learn by listening: hearing the words shows you what the spelling doesn't, and soon you'll read most new words aloud without thinking.

Why Input Matters Most

Traditional language learning tries to make you speak before you're ready, forcing you to memorize grammar rules or drill vocabulary out of context.

But when you're pushed to speak too early, you're often just guessing, making mistakes, and creating bad habits. Instead, our method emphasizes constant exposure to natural, understandable French, similar to how children learn their first language.

Required Reading: Input - what it is and why you need it

Daily Lessons: How to Use Them

Each day's lesson comes with clear instructions: simply follow along step by step. If you've comfortably finished a day's content, it's perfectly fine to continue to the next lesson. But don't rush, and take breaks if you're tired. Enjoying the process is crucial; if you don't, burnout is inevitable.

Using a Lesson Page

Every lesson is one short conversation, in a few numbered steps. Press Play all to hear it from start to finish, or the round button next to a line to hear just that line. The line being played is highlighted, so your eyes can follow along. Each speaker has a voice of their own. The Options button next to Play all holds these settings, and the page remembers them for every lesson:

• Play each line once, twice or three times in a row.
• Speed slows the audio down to 0.8× or 0.6× without changing the voice.
• Hide the English leaves the translations blank so you can test yourself. Tap where a line's English was to peek at it.
• Word cards: point at any word of a French line (or tap it) to see what it means.
• Listen only hides all the text, for pure listening.

On a computer, the keyboard works too: R plays or pauses the whole dialogue, 1 to 9 play a line, E hides or shows the English, and the ← → arrows go to the previous or next day.

When you've finished a lesson, press Done, on to the next day: it takes you to the next one and, with a free account, marks the day done, so the course page and the menu show where you left off. If you spot a mistake in a line, press Spotted a mistake? under the dialogue, choose the line and tell us what's wrong.

Saving Your Progress

You don't need an account to learn: every lesson is open to everyone. To keep track of your progress, create a free account with your email address. Every day you finish is then saved to your account, and the course page and the menu show where you left off. Log in on your phone, another computer or a new browser, and you pick up where you left off there too.

Without an account, nothing about your progress is kept. If you marked days done in this browser before progress moved to accounts, they're still here, waiting: create an account or log in on this browser and they go into it. Your account holds only your email address and the lessons you've marked done, and you can delete it any time from its page.

Tu, Vous and Politeness in Every Lesson

French has two words for "you". Tu is for friends, family and people your own age in a relaxed setting; vous is for strangers, older people, customers, your boss and anyone you'd speak to formally, and it's also the "you" for more than one person. People who meet at work or in a shop start with vous, and may move to tu once they know each other better. Politeness also lives in small words: a bonjour before anything else, in a shop, on a bus or at a counter, with monsieur or madame for people you don't know, and s'il vous plaît and merci.

You don't need to study the rules. Each lesson's situation says who the speakers are and how they know each other, and across the course you meet every combination: women and men, students and teachers, neighbors, colleagues, bosses, customers and old friends. Notice how they speak to each other, and the right words will start to feel natural.

Maximizing Your Input

Your goal is simple: get as much input as possible. This doesn't mean just focused study; it means immersing yourself in French as often as you can, even passively. Listen to French podcasts, YouTube videos, films, series or French songs while you walk, exercise, cook, or commute. Spoken French is more relaxed than the written kind: people often drop the ne of ne ... pas (je sais pas, "I don't know"), say on for "we", and shorten words (resto for restaurant). That's normal: it's how people talk. You'll also hear accents from Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland and Africa: this course uses the standard French of Paris, and once your ear knows it, the others come more easily.

AJATT famously emphasizes this: passive listening helps your brain get accustomed to French sounds, making the language feel natural over time.

Enjoy the Process and Avoid Burnout

Learning a language should be enjoyable. If you're feeling exhausted, slow down. Remember, this isn't just about learning French; it's about getting used to French. Meeting French every day, even passively, makes it part of your daily life. Eventually, it becomes natural, comfortable, and even part of your identity.

If you consistently engage with the language through input, you'll soon find yourself thinking in French. When you've had enough exposure, the desire to speak will naturally emerge, and you won't need to force it. It'll come as naturally as breathing.

Don't Give Up: We're Always Here

Learning French is a journey, not a race. If life gets in the way and you take a break, that's fine. We'll always be here. Simply come back whenever you're ready, pick up exactly where you left off, and keep going.

Trust the process, keep reading and listening, keep reviewing, and above all, enjoy yourself. French will become a natural part of your life before you know it.