Learn French

Start at the alphabet

The French on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 488 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded French voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random.

• 26letters
• 10digits
• 32pronunciation rules
• 300core words
• 60everyday phrases
• 60sentences

Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the course teaches them:

• ch — “ch” sounds like English SHchat — cat
• gn — “gn” sounds like NY, as in canyonmontagne — mountain
• j — “j” is a soft ZH, like the s in “measure”jour — day

Then material that does not run out

Once you are reading, the level is the point. The Text Generator writes French at the CEFR level, length, topic and format you ask for, so the step up is a setting rather than a new book. Speaking scores you word by word as you read aloud. The Conversation Partner talks back. The Translator explains a sentence instead of replacing it, and the Corrector marks what you wrote and says why.

Above the on-ramp sits the Path — a station map from A1 to C2 with grammar, vocabulary and checkpoint stations — and Words & Notes, where everything you save comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule in seven quiz styles.

What French actually costs a beginner

French writes letters it does not pronounce and pronounces links that are not written. A final consonant is usually silent until the next word begins with a vowel, at which point it comes back; the nasal vowels have no English equivalent at all; and the same sound is spelled four or five ways. This is why the course carries more pronunciation cards for French than for any other language here, each with a real word and a recorded voice, and why the reading tool matters: French rewards volume, and the generator gives you as much of it as you want at the level you are actually at.