How hard is French to learn? | An honest guide for English speakers 

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I don't know why I, a Frenchman, keep watching videos in English about how to learn French 😅

Dude, French is so easy to learn. As a french native, i studied literally ZERO hour, yet I'm fluent.

Waitress on Train: Un caf? Mr. Bean: Oui. Waitress on Train: Du sucre? Mr. Bean: Non. Waitress on Train: You speak very good French. Mr. Bean: Gracias.

I spent 8 years learning French in school and was never anywhere near fluent. Years later I learned it in 5 months. It's not about the time you spend learning, it's about the method.

The good thing about French is that you could make A TON of mistakes and still be understood. It's a really permissive language. You don't have to bother about masculine/feminine : your accent is a dead giveaway that you are not a native anyway.

French verbs are very good if you want to tell a story in the past of someone who is planning to possibly do something in the future and you want the narrator to be in the present.

Honestly french is easy, but if you want to perfect it, it's a whole different dimension..

The next level about "Beau-Belle", is that you can also say "Un bel appartement" xdd

After attempting to learn Japanese, I will no longer complain about French.

It's true that there are languages that are objectively more difficult than others. The grammar of Slavic languages is way more complex than the Chinese grammar. Latin languages have more than ten tenses while Hebrew has just three. The pronunciation in Spanish or Greek is clearly easier than in Chinese or Polish. But at the end of the day I think that the biggest factor to judge the difficulty of a language is the degree of similarity with your mother tongue or with a language that you already speak to a descent level. For example, Polish is a very hard language for a Spanish speaker like me, nonetheless I already speak Russian. So I'm already familiar with the Slavic pronunciation, the two verbs system (robic-zrobic), the declinations, and so on. If Polish was my first Slavic language, as a Spanish speaker, It would be very hard to get to a descent level in that language. But my Russian knowledge gave a great push forward to my Polish learning journey.

You have a habit of making videos that immediately apply to me, but if your next video is about Tagalog I’ll be convinced you have me wire-tapped.

The « r » at the end of « parler » is not really silent. That’s the combination of the letters « er » that makes the sound « é »

Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire..."I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women and High German to my horse" That's the way to do it.

Spanish: I'm a difficult language because I have grammatical gender. Everything is either male or female. French: So what? I have that, too, but I don't slap an "A" on all my feminine nouns and an "O" on my masculine nouns, so with me, you actually have to memorize the genders of nouns. German: Amateurs. I have those, plus a neutral gender, and zero logic for classifying them. Spoons are male! Forks are female! Knives have no gender! Swahili: Well, I don't have gender... but I do have 16 noun classes, which are basically the same thing. And you can't even say "it" or conjugate a verb without knowing which class that particular noun belongs to.

At 3:51 the "r" in "parler" is not silent just "er" make a sound (we can translate the sound by "é") it's the same for "ez" its make the sound "é" A word with a silent letter can be "chat" we don't pronounce the "t" (chat mean cat) Other else the video is perfect! I speak French and this video can really help. I am sure many people learned with

I’m American and studied French for a year and loved it. I used it a lot when I moved to Germany and visited France a lot. It’s a beautiful language and it’s not hard to learn. 60% of English is mis-pronounced French.

When I was a student in the 50s we studied Latin. After two years of Latin I found French incredibly easy

As a native french speaker, i think the most difficult thing, when you learn french, is not to be understand, but to understand native french. Like all the diminution of the words and the "verlan"

I *used to* be able to speak and write French fairly fluently, and I learned it as an autodidact--to the point that one of my French friends said that I had no accent. However, since this language was so popular, I just "had to" be different and took up Russian as my second foreign language. (German, which I still speak and write fluently, is my second.) Now, I regret my decision to concentrate on other languages, and hope that I can regain what I knew when I was about 20 years old, as French is (in my opinion) the most beautiful language in terms of the way it sounds.

The reasons for learning are insanely important. If you have decent reasons then the difficulty becomes totally irrelevant.

I'm a native English speaker and actually loved the old fashioned way I was taught French at school. I loved sitting there learning new grammar /verbs and tenses etc etc.....same with Spanish and Italian. I taught myself some Portuguese using the same method. Everyone is different but for me I don't think I could possibly have ended up fluent in French without that thorough immersion into the language and the way it works.

As a natively bilingual (French/English) Canadian who is all too used to watching my fellow citizens (including friends and family) struggle with learning French or English as second languages, I have to say that your analysis and recommendations were spot on. Spoken French is far less daunting than formal writing (and informal written French, such as texting and such, is relatively forgiving). Getting in the habit of actually speaking, especially to native speakers (so you pick up on stuff like contractions, informal terms, slang and such) is really important. Everyday spoken French does NOT sound like textbook French. It's way more streamlined and fluid. The dichotomy between casual everyday language and formal language is more pronounced in French and the textbooks focus on the formal. Also, while both French and English lack phonetic spelling (so you cannot easily guess how a word is spelled in either language simply by hearing it), it is far easier to correctly sound out a word you have never heard before in French than in English because French is much more consistent in how it is sounded out. There's a pattern to what letters are silent, which silent letters modify preceding vowels and other such things. In English, those patterns exist (e.g. an e following a vowel and consonant is usual silent but makes the preceding vowel long - e.g. can vs cane) but these are much less reliable and consistent (e.g. come does not have a long O but rather a short U). Take the many different soundings of "ough" for example (which are hellish for French speakers learning English). That doesn't tend to happen in French. In French, something like "ough" would have one consistent pronunciation (in any given accent/dialect - each dialect will tend to stay internally consistent but there is some variations between them - fewer silent consonants in Belgium, even more dropped consonants than usual paired with more complex and historically conservative vowels in Quebec, etc -- that said, they're all broadly mutually intelligible and most folks can drop to a more standard register of spoken French to mute their local dialect). As for gender, honestly, most European languages have grammatical gender. English is the oddball that lost grammatical gender. Old English had 3 grammatical genders, like other Germanic languages. Sure, it adds a layer of difficulty for an English learner but grammatical gender is a thing in learning most Indo-European languages. In some ways, it's easier to start off without existing assumptions (being a blank slate, if you will) about grammatical gender because it can be trickier to learn a whole new set of them that don't match what you grew up with (like going from French to German and vice-versa).

Wa had a geography teacher, perfect bilingual German-French. In fact his french was so good it took us months to discover he was in fact German. He said: - It takes 3 weeks to learn Dutch - It takes 3 months to learn English - It takes 3 years to learn German - It takes your whole life to learn French.

Bonjour! Je suis une Québécoise et j’apprécie beaucoup que vous avez mis un petit drapeau du Canada à côté du drapeau français. Vous donnez de très bon conseils je crois pour apprendre le français, j'espère que ça va aider beaucoup de gens à apprendre cette belle langue!

Thanks for promoting our language man! Vive la France

As a french i can tell you than the "r" at the end of "parler" isn't silent it's here to make the sound [e] if it wasn't here it would sound like the end of the Word "parole" for example

Silent consonne "R" with "Parler" is a bad exemple, because in this exemple "er" is a digraph like "et" but digraphs "et" and "er" are pronounced the same (Entrer et parler) . But the surprise is "er" can be pronounced like "ai" (Un vers dans la haie. )

I think when you're learning a language the most important thing is to have resources that you enjoy so that you stick to it. For French, I used the Lire en Français Facile series by hachette. They offer graded reader versions of classics such as les trois mousquetaires. And these stories really keep you motivated.

Ultimately learning languages lies on a single rule : if you just learn from books, class and internet you will learn very slowly and an academical language, whereas if you practice with natives quite often you will learn better, quicker and how the actual spoken language sounds like. Whatever your target language is.

Thank you, Olly. As semi-retired ESL teacher (who wishes he spoke French) I was impressed with your initial presentation here. I can clearly see that you are an excellent teacher and when I have the time to really get serious about learning French and giving it the time it needs in my schedule I will definitely be back. I like your idea of learning from story telling. Cheers.

Whenever the going gets tough in language learning, I always watch a few of your videos. I think your passion for your craft, paired with your humility is like a light. When surrounded by the darkness of not knowing what to do, how to approach something, where to continue, you bring up a spot light onto a path that has been there all along. Suddenly it's not so cold, and the lack of understanding is much more understandable. Language learning is a journey that never quite ends, so of course it feels difficult, but it is possible. Thank you for all of your hard work and inspiration!!!

French became much easier to me after some Spanish. I tried French first, but it was too much for me then. While Spanish is much more regular and straightforward - and as a Latin language it provides a lot of hints for the French grammar (conjugations etc), and shares a lot of basic vocabulary with French.

french being my second language, i speak it fluently and have been using it ever since i was about 4 yo, and i still watch your "learning french" videos for some reason 😭 de toute façon, chapeau bas ! love your channel ! ❤️

DELIGHTFUL PRESENTATION, OLLY! I love French. I love THE French. I love France 🇫🇷. Your upbeat, enthusiastic encouragement gives me motivation to plunge back in to diligently studying LE BEAU LANGAGE, so that when I return to dwell in LA BELLE FRANCE encore, I’ll be able to express to the native speakers how much I appreciate their respectful patience

I'm a French as a foreign language teacher and I will use what I learned in this video to help my beginner students.

I'm a native Spanish speaker. After learning English, I started with French and I realized English has many French words. This and my Spanish helped me a lot with my French

It's all fun and games until somebody puts a direct object before the auxiliary verb "avoir", and then all hell breaks loose. ^^

I'm Finnish and Finnish is my mother tongue. In school I studied English (starting age 9), French (11), Swedish (13) and German (14). French was definitely the hardest to learn. And the problem is also that after finishing school, you hardly ever need to use or hear French anywhere so it's easy to forget it. Same with German. Swedish is harder to forget because I hear it spoken almost daily due to Finland having a Swedish speaking minority. English is really easy to both learn and maintain because it's in every media you can think of. For example, we never dub movies or tv shows in Finnish. I guess what I'm saying is that to learn and maintain many languages at the same time is really time consuming and you must really put some effort into it. Not all of us can be naturally gifted polyglots.

Fantastic video that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Currently learning French and it's becoming easier each week.

Really nice video! I think it sums up the challenges of learning French as an English speaker. Coming from the very phonetic language of Spanish, I can relate to the feeling of overwhelm at first because of all of the silent letters and odd pronunciation, but you really do get a feel for how words are likely going to be pronounced after a little while of reading/listening. I have a long way to go, but it no longer feels overwhelming! And by the way, I enjoy your story in your French Uncovered course. I love learning through stories.

Je me demande toujours pourquoi il y a des vidéos “comment apprendre le français” dans mes suggestions et pourquoi je les regarde…

Thanks Olly. I'm learning it as a hobby and a challenge. But its like a maze, I think I'm making a breakthrough then I hit a wall. But this is all part of the process. Your videos are very encouraging and clearly come from one who has a gift for language. It all helps.

What a fantastic speaker Currently learning French and this video has affirmed my motivation to continue. Thank you.

Ah learning French. That was a fun experience. I remember learning that for all four years of high school only for me not to use it for almost ten years and then find out in France that I didn’t know much. I grew up in a bilingual home so I already can speak Portuguese. So I come to the conclusion that immersion works better for me then traditional class. And man what I difference that mentality makes, especially adding your storytelling technique. For the past six months learning Japanese from your programs and constant immersion and so far and it’s been a fun journey. Can only read/watch lower level stuff in Japanese so far but it feels a lot more progress then four years of high school. Already bought your French programs (plus a few others to learn in the future). Hope to learn more from your channel and whatever you have available in the future.

As a French, I am really appreciating how he is actually telling how French is hard. By the way your accent is actually very good!

I’m learning english, I always watch your videos to improve my listening, thank you so much for your videos. Saludos desde Chile 🇨🇱

hi, just found your channel some days ago (yt algorithm) and watched some vids of yours. as a native french, having learned a "socalled impossible language", Hungarian, also having been a french teacher there for some time, i appreciate your approach, and almost heard myself :) "make mistakes! the point is to communicate, you will be thanked later". Thanks, and cheers from France!

French is a bit harder than Italian and Spanish for English speakers, a lot easier than Mandarin and Korean. My forty year experience. Don't trust RU-vid videos about people who say they speak all these languages.

Bon courage à tous ceux qui apprennent le français ! 👍

Im actually french and i was very happy to see how you try to do people learn french thanks you olly richards 😃

Perfect. I agree with all your points. I've told others, you have to know you really want to learn, and you have study/practice (a lot). There is no easy way. I was lucky to learn French by immersion, I lived in France for a year and went to school with French students, spoke only French for days on end. And i was young, that helped. Your videos are terrific, I really enjoy your presentation

The thing about French exceptions that I think is hilarious (but that might be because I'm a linguist and a French speaker) is that even our exceptions have rules. I definitely understand why it makes it super hard to learn, but between that and the history behind the language, it's pretty fascinating to learn about! Truth being told, almost half of French's difficulties are due to the fact that it's a Romance language but with far more Germanic influences than most. English, in comparison, is the other way around, a mostly Germanic language but with more Romance influences than most Germanic languages. When it comes to pronuniciation however, I always find it funny how English people complain about the pronunciation of French when it's exactly the same for us with English. I mean, once you know all the theory of pronunciation, there are a few exceptions, but mostly, even them follow rules. However, go explain a student that "Boughs", "Through" and "Rough" are all pronounced differently xD (I'm saying that with love, I just really love languages!)

3:50 Alors petite correction. Le r de parler n’est pas muet en fait. Il se combine avec le e de devant pour former le son é

I'm so glad that I came across your channel some days ago! Recently I started learning French, and your advice is pretty helpful to me. Thanks a lot!

This was so helpful, thank you!! I noticed there are a lot of words and grammar rules that are similar to Spanish , which helps me out a lot.

As a frenchman knowing a bit of english, i can tell you that both languages are deeply interrelated. I think that french is by far the easiest foreign language to learn for a native english speaker. Although english has germanic roots too, it seems to me that the task of learning german would be much more difficult for an english speaker than the one of learning french. Roughly 50% of english has been inherited from french, since french has been the aristocratic language in England during centuries. I have been told that english has been purposely altered to differ from french once the english crown realized that the hundred years war couldn't be won. After all, it was the language of the ennemy :) . I think that it is quite easy for an english speaker to replace the ending of english adverbs to convert them to french (Apparently becomes apparemment, abruptly becomes abruptement, etc) the same goes for verbs, nouns and adjectives. Really once you get the trick, both languages become very similar. Hope this will help you to dare beginning to learn french ;) . And finally don't be afraid if your pronounciation is incorrect, french people will be so glad to see your efforts in learning their language that they will try to help rather than kidding you. They prefer an englishman speakink poor french to a person talking in english without even having asked if they understand it, this behavior being very common and considered very impolite.

I'm a Frenchman and the way you described french is perfect exacly the problems of the French language and i've been learning English for about 8~9 years througout, games, series, films, youtube videos and other ways only 3 years in school and i didn't really learned anything lol continue your great videos ^^

As far as vocabulary is concerned, French is easy for English speakers, since about 40% of English words are French words. Not always pronounced or written the same way, but basically the same. I know an anglophone who lives in Montréal and he told me that whenever he is searching for a French equivalent of an English word, he asks himself: « What would be the complicated way of saying it in English? » Usually, the answer is the key to the French word! By the way, you deserve congratulations for your pronunciation of « tu ». English speakers usually are in big trouble with the French « u ».

Wow ! That's a very nice video ! I'm French and all the things you're saying are pure truth, you understood how our language works ! Thanks man, I subscribe to this chanel immediately 😁

Thank you so much for making this video. I just barely started learning the language, but this video is giving me hope that one day I can be fluent in French as I am with English.

The first foreign language I learned was French and my native language is Spanish. My first impression of the French spelling "l'ortographie" was that it is kind of similar to English but the words and grammar are similar to Spanish. I listened and read at the same time and after several weeks recognized all the similarities between the languages. So, for me, French is easy. Moreover, I started learning English one year ago, and when I read English literature I found a lot of different words I already knew because I studied them before with Frech.

Superbe vidéo ! Je comprend mieux le français grâce à toi 👌

I just come across this on my feed and thought I'd give it listen. The points you addressed were good and to all intends and purposes true and help. As elegant and graceful as the French is, as a dyslexic, I found it an absolute nightmare to learn in school. The irregularities are what get me. I have a German girlfriend and I have found German to be much more accessible, even though I'm still not even good at that. I'm really interested in your story method and I think that could help progress my German in more fun way. Thank you for giving a way forward 😀

Well I learned french in my 5th semester in the university but don't remember it much now. I like English more than french.

French is my very best language. It's also my mother tongue 😁

Ah la la, les joies de l’algorithme RU-vid 😂 Très bonne vidéo en tout cas, de la part d’un Français 🇫🇷 !

Great advise as always and in agreement story learning is so good

I'm a Canadian who just barely knows French (mostly words learned from reading cereal boxes and such) and this was very interesting. The four tricky areas all made perfect sense to me and was very easy to understand. Really, I think the most difficult part to learn will be the grammar. Thank you for the video as I was interested in picking it up.

I started to teach myself to read & write French when I was 8. I didn’t want to wait till year 7!

I’ve always had a magnetic urge to learn French. It was like love at first sound when I first heard spoken French. I love the music, especially Gims, Stromae and Indila. For me, I will always be “learning” French. I will never consider myself as having arrived at perfect fluency because just as in English there are always new words and ideas to learn. My next task I have set for myself is to read all of Michel Foucault’s most famous books in the original French. After which I will probably move on to Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir or some other French philosopher. The French language for me is a part of a lifelong journey.

As a student I should say, this video was amazing 👌🏻 And maybe its hard but it's enjoyable to learn and useful as well

I really needed to hear this video. I need to find my inspiration to learn French again

Well I'm a french native speaker and I had this feeling that oral french is way more easier than the written french ! That's why i'm making french video (explaining some words in english) about Let's play (commenting on a game). The format is long for the aim to listen to a lot of words, who finally repeat at some point and assimilate a lot of those to be automatically produicing those words and able to understand those words.

Hello, I am French and i am living in Paris region. To speak French perfectly while respecting the grammatical rules is very difficult even for a Frenchman. Few of us master it perfectly. The spelling rules are even more difficult because of the many exceptions. In everyday life, the French take a lot of freedom in their way of explaining themselves and free themselves from most of the rules. As long as we understand each other, that's the most important thing. Sorry for my very bad English accent in this post 😂😜

Thanks for the video. Keep up the great work Olly!

In middle school I started Italian Russian and Spanish in HS and this year French but last year it was Dutch and I actually bought books in Dutch from the Netherlands and had them sent over to me here in America and it’s so cool to read a physical book in a language you’re learning. Definitely recommend reading stories or books in the language you’re learning. Really does help. Short stories or children’s book to start and progressively challenge yourself

Si tu parles 8 langues aussi bien que tu parles français, c’est vraiment incroyable !

3:13 Actually, the pronunciation of written French is very consistent. The reverse isn't true (writing down what you hear), and there's of course a lot o redundancy, but knowing the general rules for pronouncing different combinations of letters will enable a learner to pronounce 99% of French words. The few exceptions that exist are usually cases of pronouncing T's that should normally be silent.

Thank you Ollie, for the soothing way of addressing the anxieties of us trying to learn our 3rd foreign language. I think that’s why so many French native speakers got hooked by your la belle chaîne. What’s your 6th langue étrangère you plan to conquer ?

You are correct! Motivation is the key, the rest will follow.

In my work I had to deal with native english speakers ( and some other languages, Polish and German people as example ) a lot and some of them were trying to learn French so they would ask to only communicate in french to practice, and often ask me to correct their mistakes. So here's some things for people learning French to not worry too much about until you get really fluent : -the final letter being silent or not. If you pronounce it we will still understand you, some people may correct you but they'll understand. -the different éèëê : it will very rarely confuse people if you mix two up. Even most French people don't make a difference between ê and é or between ë and just e. Maybe you'll have to repeat one or two words that will sound a bit weird but generally it'll be ok. -Gender : it's quite cute when non native french speakers mix up gender of object, we may chuckle to it and correct you but nobody will get mad about it. Even in the example, "le beau maison" sounds weird but it's cute. -Spelling: sooooo many french are super bad at spelling, so you can make mistakes, at least you have an excuse xD

This video is really good, but, as a frenchman, I would add a fifth point, the french grammar can be an absolute nightmare for some of english speaking people because it can be verry tricky, even sometimes for us, french people

I watched this video even though I'm French and still I found it funny to watch because all the tricky rules to learn that you mention are said to be tricky by native speakers themselves. I also think French is a bit tricky to learn and to speak but this is what makes it so beautiful!

8:00 calling us all out right there, what a teacher.

Qu'est-ce que je fais sur cette vidéo alors que je suis française 😂 honnêtement, j'ai trouvé ta vidéo super sympa à regarder ! 🥰

Is french hard ? French : we have genders for objects Dutch : Indeed, but it can also be neutral, and french objects genders are not the same for us Chinese : Wait, you have endings on the verb to know the tense of the verb ? And you say chinese is difficult Americans : He want a Bo'o'o'woda

You made me learn French easier😩THANK YOU🙏🏽

Hey you are very good on french (im french/je suis français) and your prounonciation too was very good.

I'm a native spanish speaker and have been trying to learn french lately. Even though everybody says french is related to Spanish (as well as the other romance languages) it's been really hard, specially compared to portuguese and italian, which are relatively easier for us.

Good luck to everyone. Let's be honest guys, even we, as native French speakers, find french very hard and not easy to master.

Merci le sang maintenant je sais parler français grâce à toi. T’es le best

Your silent communication is amazing. Is that natural or a skill you enveloped ? I'm talking about your body language, hand movements. It aligns perfectly with your speech. And therefore making it even more powerfull, truthworthy for viewers. Bravo. Er norsk et av språkene du har lært ? Fantastisk video. 👌

I’m French and don’t worry guys we understand you and we know you’re learning French ❤️ :) (we notice it quite quickly anyway 😂)

As a French, I can assure you that if an English speaks to me, I can easily understand everything even if the speaker does masters the « é è ë e », or the gender, or the silent letter, and same for the « r » sound. The issue in understanding actually lies in the « C and S » because sometimes a C is pronounced as a K (contre, « kontr »), a S (cela, « sela », and a S can both be pronounced as an S (si, « si ») and Z (desire, « dezir »), and if someone mixed them, it’s where i actually start to struggle understanding.

Totalement d’accord ! Très bonne vidéo :)

Le français est ma langue maternelle. Cette vidéo est très intéressante à regarder pour prendre conscience de cette langue par votre perspective !

I don't know what it is, but I just love listening to Olly Richards talk. There's just something about his tone haha.

Also, about the end message, I can confirm : I used to dislike English because I was the worst in my class, I sucked at it SO hard you can't imagine... But then I discovered Undertale, I made the effort to check a let's play in English since I already knew it by heart, and a completely new world opened to me (there were clearly not as much content in french than there were in english) as I discovered the fandom, then Tumblr, then internet as a whole (I had no interest for social medias before) and I was so driven by passion I learned to love English at the same time, and without even realizing I became fluent And now I'm studying it in a University to become a translator for editors. Life sure is full of surprises. You have no IDEA how much my world grew since then, it's incredible how a new language opens you doors to new cultures, new people, new communities, I learned so much on so many things! ... Sorry I diverged

Another excellent video. I started to pick up French quite naturally by the time I was in high school, between the cognates and French words imported wholesale into English, my third-year Spanish class, and the French used in English literature (e.g., Dickens). If you know anything about the history of England, you know that much of modern English comes from French. Fantastique!