🗼 French Français
About 300 million people across France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and much of West Africa
✍️ The script
The Latin alphabet you already write, with five accents: é è ê ë ç
🎯 Why learn it
French is an official language of the United Nations, the Olympic Games and the European Union, and it opens the door to Canada, where a French speaker can study and work. It also hands you thousands of English words for free — nation, question, important and table are the same word in both.
🌱 How this course teaches
You will not begin with verb tables. You begin the way a child in Lyon begins: hearing a greeting every morning until it becomes yours, then noticing that the same little pattern keeps returning. The rule is shown only after you have already used it three times — because a pattern you have felt is remembered, and a rule you were told is forgotten.
🔊 The sounds to get right first
| u (tu, rue) | ew | Say 'ee' and then round your lips as if to whistle, without moving your tongue. That is the sound. |
|---|---|---|
| r (Paris, merci) | a soft gargle | Made at the back of the throat, near where you say 'gh'. Never rolled at the tip of the tongue. |
| on / en (bon, enfant) | ohn / ahn | The air goes through the nose and the n is never fully finished. Hold your nose and the sound dies — that is how you know you have it. |
| final consonants | usually silent | Petit is 'puh-TEE'. The last letter is written but not said, unless it is c, r, f or l. |
| ch (chat) | sh | Chat is 'sha', not 'chat'. |
| é (café) | ay | A short bright 'ay'. è (mère) is more open, like the e in 'bed'. |
The lessons
Meeting a person
Greet someone, say who you are, and part politely — the first ninety seconds of every friendship.
Open → Lesson 26 phrasesAsking for what you want
Ask for a thing, say please and thank you, and understand the answer.
Open → Lesson 36 phrasesTalking about yourself
Say where you are from, how old you are, and what you are learning.
Open → Lesson 46 phrasesThe numbers that run the day
Count, tell the time, give a phone number and understand a price.
Open → Lesson 56 phrasesWhere things are
Ask the way, understand the answer, and describe where something is.
Open → Lesson 66 phrasesYesterday, today and tomorrow
Say what you did, what you are doing and what you will do.
Open → Lesson 76 phrasesFeelings and opinions
Say what you like, what you think, and how you feel — where a language becomes your own.
Open → Lesson 86 phrasesKeeping the language alive
Turn eight lessons into a habit that does not fade.
Open →🔁 Keeping it
Learn le/la with every noun from day one, chant the numbers until they are automatic, and say bonjour to everything in your house. Two lines a day for a year will take you further than any weekend course.
🧘 Ask the Acharya
He answers from your own chapters and his Life & Wisdom library — including how to study a language without losing it.
