Learning

Reference Works

Now that I’m learning mostly by reading and listening, I find myself reaching for a reference work many times a week. Of course you can always type words and phrases into Google to get some information, but I have found the following works to be reliably better than the search results that show up.

  • Dictionnaire de Français Larousse (Android app): an on-device dictionary with French definitions for French entries. Gives multiple scholarly definitions for 80 000 words, as well as expressions, synonyms, homonyms, and conjugations. Let’s you star and review “Favoris” and also review your search history. This is my goto for unfamiliar words. Price: $4.50.
  • Linguee: an online dictionary that features extensive external, sources. Each entry gives a definition, some homonyms, and dozens of parallel passages, one French one English, with the target word or expression present in the French. This is my preferred site for nuanced usage and to get the connotation based on the contexts in which they are used. Works great for phrase searches. Linguee does a good job of “fuzzy match”, connecting inflected or conjugated forms of a word with each other so the set of examples is broad. Also available as an app, though I’ve never used that.
  • Le Petit Robert micro: a compact, printed dictionary with 90 000 definitions for 35 000 words. I have the 2012 edition, but I imagine that the current 2018 edition is little changed. This is the dictionary I use when I’m reading in bed at night and don’t want to introduce screen time to my nighttime routine. Occasionally has better definitions than the Larousse app.
  • Les 1001 Expressions Préférées des Français, by George Planelles: this is a great resource for idioms that I don’t recognize, even if I know each of the words individually. It contains 1 001 one-page articles, each on a single expression, organized alphabetically. The articles are humorous, explaining in an often round about way the meaning, history, and current usage of the each expression. There’s also a lengthy citation of one or more real usages from literature or journalism. Back in 2018 I started a project of reading through the entire 1 000 page book one article at a time, but gave up somewhere around passer l’arme à gauche (filed under A for arme).
  • Le dictionnaire visuel: this is a gigantic volume (un pavé, as they say) that addresses the question “What’s the name of that thing you use to do such-and-such? You know the thing at the end of the whatcha-ma-call-it?”. It shows all kinds of objects and scenes from everyday life organized by theme: plants, animals, transport, energy, art, clothing, buildings, etc. Each page has dozens or hundreds of labels giving words for the various objects and actions present. This book is just a joy to browse, as well as a goto reference when you need a word for a thing you don’t even know in English. Sometimes you can look these up in a bilingual dictionary, but a visual dictionary is far more accurate and fun. The level of detail and vocabulary is fairly deep — this isn’t Usborne’s “First Thousand Words in French”. I marvel at the work that went into choosing the pictures and organizing them, let alone the creation of labels.

    There’s also an online version of Le dictionnaire visuel, but it doesn’t recreate the same browsing experience.
An image from Le dictionnaire visuel, online edition.

Paid Self-Study Lessons

  • Lingoni. For a low subscription fee, they offer a decent collection of instructional videos, written exercises, and audio selections together with a gated structure for advancing through them. It’s pretty decent. When the schools closed in March 2020 for Covid-19, I spent several weeks teaching French over Zoom for my daughter and some of her friends. The level A1 videos (“French with Alicia”) are available free on the Lingoni YouTube channel.

Free Online Materials

Here’s a list of free online resources for learning French:

  • Partajon, which bills itself as “un espace destiné aux personnes souhaitant passer un examen DELF ou DALF ainsi qu’aux enseignants qui les préparent“. Offers many free exercises and articles.

Educational YouTube Channels

Here’s a list of some YouTube channels I recommend for learning French: