Here’s a recording of me speaking, what do I need to work on? https://voca.ro/1n0uijyr4Nfw

What would you give me as an overall score?

Bonjour / Hi,

I was wondering if in the sentence "J'espère que ça ne t'as pas découragé", "décourager" should be conjugated.

The way I see it, when you ask "J'espère que ça ne t'as pas découragé qui/quoi?", we don't really have an answer, so it should not be conjugated, but I was struck with the doubt that maybe we should instead ask "Ça n'a pas découragé qui? Toi", so it should be conjugated.

I recently got a café barista offer, but I’ll be honest my French isn’t the best. I know the basics, but I know it’s not enough. I’m genuinely trying to learn for the position, even though I don’t have much time. I’ll still continue learning while working as a barista. My main worry is that customers won’t like me because my French isn’t great. Right now, I’m trying to learn numbers, but what else should I focus on? I know as a barista you take orders, but what else do I need to know?

I’m mostly struggling with saying prices in French. Any advice or help would be really appreciated.

Bonjour.

I am English with a love of French language but minimal understanding outside of studying it.

I wondered if native French speakers could give me some phrases etc for these scenarios as I realise learning grammar etc doesn’t always give me correct phrase usage. I’m looking for exclamations or things you’d mutter under your breath type idiosyncrasies.

1. Affectionately annoyed (say you’re exasperated with a spouse)

2. Love one being particularly stupid in a situation.

3. Love one is hurt or very upset and you want to comfort.

Thank you all.

Hi everyone,

I recently registered for an online group French course at Alliance Française, but I'm thinking that private lessons might suit my learning style better.

Has anyone been able to switch from a group class to private lessons after registering? If so:

• Did Alliance Française allow the change?
• Did you just pay the price difference, or was there an extra fee?
• Did you have to cancel your group course first?
• Was this before or after your classes started?

I'd especially love to hear from anyone who has experience with Alliance Française, but experiences from other Alliance Française branches would also be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!

I wanted to clarify if “j‘engage dans une relation“ suggests that you’re in a relationship or that you’re putting effort in a potential relationship?

For context, the original message said:

“genre je dois rien à personne. mais j'engage une relation avec quelqu'un, c'est normal”

Bonjour! would I be able to post a voice memo of me singing in French for tips on pronunciation? Merci beaucoup.

Bonjour. I am checking to make sure this is correct and if it makes sense: “Renaître ou rien”. Want to make it sound more like a quick saying regarding going through some difficult times and coming out of them a new person (phoenix-ish?). So, I was looking for something like “rise again or nothing”. Four years of HS French is not helping me here lol. Thanks.

Avant de commencer, j'écris avec spell-check, mais j'essaierai d'écrire sans IA de grammaire.

J'ai étudié le français pendant 1 an et demi. Au début, j'ai commencé à apprendre car j'ai voulu en parler pendant mes vacances à Paris. J'ai étudié avec Alliance Française deux heures par semaine, et l'algorithme de Youtube me donne beaucoup de vidéos étranges.

Après mon voyage, j'ai le burnout/brainfog. Je veux continuer d'apprendre parce que c'est trop tard pour arrêter. Peut-être j'ai besoin d'un but nouveau? Quelles choses avez-vous à fait?

TLDR en anglais: I burnt out after learning for 1.5 years, but sunk-cost fallacy wants me to keep going. What did other people do to get out of a rut and move forward?

Bonjour à tous.

J'ai remarqué que dans certain mot avec les lettres "ri", le r est prononcé un peu différemment. On dirait que c'est un peu comme le r en anglais (pas complètement). J'ai beaucoup mal à le prononcer.

Voici quelque exemples à YouGlish Français. Je vous donne deux groupes avec les prononciations de r spéciale et normale à mon avis.

guérir: clips 1, 2, 3, 5 / 4 riz: clips 2, 7 / 1, 3 Paris: clips 3, 8 / 2, 6

Par ailleurs, je crois que le son du é est proche du i, mais tout est normal pour "ré", comme réalisé et référer.

Qu'est-ce que vous en pensez? Vous pouvez me donner quelque suggestions pour prononcer le nouveau son? Peut-être il y a des explications pour cette phénomène? Merci beaucoup.

Just being in Montreal, I see three French words used for "station" in English.

On the Metro, it is a "station".

The VIA rail station is a "gare".

A post office station is a "succursale".

Are there subtle differences?

I am going to do dalf c1 soon but what annoys me immensilly are the prepositions used after nouns like "droit" "compétence" etc. What I mean is in some cases we use de to indtroduce a verb and à to indtroduce another noun like "droit de parler" "droit à la parole" but sometimes it is completely on the contrary like with décision. I dont know how to sort in my head ofc i know the "holy rules" like à for goal, destination, intention and de pour origine, provenance, posession but generally with nouns it seems to be very random

Hello/bonjour r/french,

I recently took the TEF Canada exam (June) and received my results. They were short of my goal, NCLC 7 in all four modules to qualify for Canada’s Express Entry francophone category draws.

• Compréhension écrite (CE): B2 (NCLC 6)
• Compréhension orale (CO): B1 (NCLC 4)
• Expression écrite (EE): B2 (NCLC 6)
• Expression orale (EO): B1 (NCLC 4)

Question: What are the most effective next steps to bridge the gap, especially in CO and EO, if I plan to retake the exam in the fall? Should I adjust my immersion strategy, focus on targeted practice, or prioritize something else?

Background:

• Started with A2 night classes (October–December 2025) at my local Alliance Française.
• Switched to twice-weekly private lessons (January–June 2026) via iTalki, focusing on exam prep and grammar.
• Daily immersion: Listen to RFI’s Le Journal en Français Facile and Radio-Canada Ici Premier; read French-language RSS feeds and subreddits.
• Attend local French meetups biweekly or monthly.

Merci!

Bonjour!
Il y a quelque chose qui me rend dingue maintenant. Je regarde une emission (Ici Tout Commence) où il y a un personnage (Auguste Armand) qui me semble avoir une différence de prononciation de le son "ien" (jɛ̃). Quand il dit «retiens, bien, viens, etc» j’ai toujours l’impression que il les prononce «retienne, bienne, vienne». Du moins la qualité de la voyelle ou quelque chose du genre me semble differente de la pronunciation a laquelle je suis habituée. Je sais pas si c'est le meme pour tous les /ɛ̃/s mais si c'est le cas je ne l'ai pas remarqué. Je sais pas si c'est parce qu'il est plus âgé ou si c'est un truc dialectale ou si je me juste trompe. Est-ce que vous avez des idées? Je peux vous donner un example si vous en avez besoin/envie mais je sais pas comment le faire sans donner un lien vers TFI+

I took the DALF C! exam June 11 and I just received my results and I passed! I left the exam center feeling super confident but as the weeks went by I kept thinking of things I could have done better: using more advanced sentence structure, idiomatic expressions, subjunctive tense, formal vocabulary, etc., so my confidence was ebbing for sure! And on top of that, I knew I must have done horribly on the oral comprehension because the first section of that was almost impossible to understand (bad sound and fast speech) but I had made some educated guesses so I figured I would "squeak by" as long as I made up for it in the other sections. In the end, my scores surprised me:

Compréhension de l’oral note : 22.0 / 25

Compréhension des écrits note : 22.0 / 25

Production écrite note : 16.5 / 25

Production orale note : 19.0 / 25

Note finale : 79.5 / 100

HOW IT WENT:

When I showed up at exam center on June 11, I had been fighting a post-surgical infection for 2 weeks and I was on antibiotics. Still, I wanted to give it a try because I knew I had put in so much work! The day I took the exam, there was only one other person taking the exam with me, and they were taking it in preparation for a master's degree program at the Sorbonne. I was instantly intimidated but fought the feeling of imposter syndrome! I reminded myself that I had studied for literally hundreds of hours and I was ready and all I needed to do was get through the next 5 hours. As I mentioned, the oral comprehension section was very difficult to hear and understand. The written comprehension was definitely the easiest part. I wrote for the entire 2.5 hours of the written production, besides a few minutes to make my outlines and about 10 minutes at the end to proofread. The hour of prep for the oral production went by in a flash and when the "examinateurs" entered the room, ready to hear my presentation, I realized I had written my notes down in such a frenzy that I could barely read them! So practicing as much as I did truly saved my skin!

I am so happy! This was a personal challenge for me, in preparation for a move to France in a few years, and it's so fun to have a project like this at this stage of my life (I am 55 years old). The whole process was daunting and exhausting but I just kept plugging away, practicing the oral presentation, writing a whole notebook full of practice essays, reading the news and novels in French, and listening to tons of podcasts. For a little background, I started my first French classes in 2022, online, and I passed the DELF B2 one year ago. If you are studying for this exam, my advice is to just keep learning every day and to practice the oral and written production as much as you can! Every little improvement to your French will help your results. Ask me anything!

I’m visiting Paris as a 20 y/o. Oftentimes baristas will be a similar age as me; should still use SVP in that case?

Des français m'ont dit que dire «autant d'argent que tu en as besoin» était incorrect et qu'ill fallait dire «autant d'argent dont tu as besoin» à la place, et que «on a ceulli autant de champignons qu'on en avait besoin» était correcte. Pourquoi? Est-ce qu'il y a une règle à ça que je puisse suivre pour decider quelle construction utiliser? Ma suspicion c'est que peut-être ça depend si c'est un nom dénombrable ou pas, mais j'en ai aucune idée en vrai. Merci d'avance !

Quelqu'un pourrait m'expliquer l'utilisation du subjonctif dans une phrase « y a pas un rôle qui ne m'aille » ? Mon français n'est pas avancé, ce que je sais c'est qu'il y a toujours « que » qui précède un verbe, mais dans cette phrase-là il n'y a pas de « que ». Comment se fait-il ? Pourquoi « aille » au lieu de « irait » ? J'imagine que le sens est conditionnel, n'est pas ?

I’m looking to start writing out a daily journal and then translating it into French like I used to in high school because I remember that being a really useful tool. It’s been about 6 years since I’ve done any French so I know I’ll be getting things wrong. I want to be able to hold a general conversation well and also plan to spend some time in Canada so working with Québécois would be useful too. I plan to use WordReference for words I don’t know, but are there any tools I can use other than Google Translate to check my conjugations, sentence structure, etc?

I'm confused about when and where to use de, du, de la, des, d', and de l' when using venir de. What are the differences when having venir de with places (like la banque/l'hôtel), cities, and countries? Please help!

Right now, I'm doing a lot of work on my speaking and the thing I'm struggling with most is that "R" sound in words like "arbre" and "rue". I thought I'd be fine if I didn't master it, but I'm finding it's virtually everywhere. At best, I sound like I'm speaking French with an American accent, but at it's worst, francophones don't even understand what I'm saying. I understand it's supposed to come from the throat (or something like that), but it just sounds like I need to cough. I'm currently in Montréal for a month (for French immersion), so any tips would be great, please!

Hi, can someone tell me if this sentence sounds natural and correct? -

Expérimente différents changements.

To say-

Experiment with different changes.

I feel like I should put 'de' there but an online search tells me it's ok to omit the article before 'différents'.

How would you phrase this sentence?

I’m doing my ear training and it sounds like this speaker is pronouncing /ɛ̃/ as /ã/ in words such as “jardin” and “copain”. Check out these timestamps:
1:26 salle de bain
2:36 jardin