Learn French
French Flashcards From Real French Content
Gender agreement, silent letters, and the passé composé. French rewards spaced repetition. Ellie makes the cards.
French has about 80 million native speakers plus another 200 million second-language speakers, making it a top-10 world language and an official language of the UN. Its frequency curve is similar to Spanish: 1,000 lemmas cover most spoken French, 5,000 gets to advanced fluency. Its specific traps: gender agreement (nouns are masculine or feminine with no reliable rule), silent letters (most word endings), and a compound-tense-heavy verb system.
Ellie generates French cards from any French text — Le Monde, a Louis Vuitton listing, subtitles from Lupin. Cards include gender markers (le/la), IPA pronunciation, and context sentences. Grammar rules become flashcards too, not just vocabulary.
The gender problem
There is no reliable rule for noun gender. About 40% of endings correlate weakly with a gender, but exceptions abound. The pragmatic solution: always learn the noun with its article (la table, not table). Ellie generates cards this way by default.
Verb tenses in order of difficulty
Present, then passé composé and imperfect (the past-tense pair every learner struggles with), then future and conditional, then subjunctive last.
- Passé composé: what happened once, with helper verb être or avoir
- Imperfect: ongoing background action or repeated past habit
- Subjunctive: after specific triggers (il faut que, bien que, avant que)
- Conditional: hypotheticals and polite requests
Silent letters — a pronunciation deck
Ellie can generate a small deck focused just on silent-letter patterns (final -s, -t, -d, most -ent endings on verbs, initial h). Ten minutes a day for a week transforms your reading speed.
Frequently asked questions
Which accent should I target — France or Quebec?
Both are understood internationally. Metropolitan (France) is what most learning material uses by default. Quebecois pronunciation is quite different but grammar overlaps.
How long to B2 conversational?
With daily practice (30 minutes reading + 20 minutes review), most learners reach B2 in 12–18 months. Immersion halves that.
Is French harder than Spanish for English speakers?
French pronunciation is harder; Spanish grammar is arguably easier. Vocabulary overlap with English is higher in French (thanks to Norman influence). Both are Category I languages per FSI — around 750 classroom hours to professional working proficiency.
Can I add audio for pronunciation?
Yes. Ellie supports attached audio and TTS. For French, TTS quality is high enough to use daily.
Does Ellie handle IPA?
Yes — cards can display IPA transcription automatically for French, which helps with silent letters and nasal vowels.
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