Learn French by reading real books

French has about 300 million speakers across 29 countries, and arguably the richest literary tradition in Europe — from medieval chansons to Proust, Camus, and contemporary prize-winners. Reading is how generations of learners have gotten to real fluency.

For English speakers, French is structurally familiar. About 30% of English vocabulary comes from French (every word ending in -tion, -ment, most of the abstract vocabulary). You'll recognize far more than you expect when you open a French novel. The challenges are pronunciation, verb conjugations, and the subjunctive — but those are all things reading handles gracefully, since you see them in context hundreds of times over a book.

Start with Le Petit Prince (our library has it), then L'Étranger by Camus (short, simple prose, philosophical), and eventually the big novels. Every tapped word becomes a flashcard.