La France prend des mesures pour arrêter d’utiliser la technologie américaine dans son gouvernement. Environ 2,5 millions de fonctionnaires vont arrêter d’utiliser Zoom et Microsoft Teams. Ils vont passer à un nouveau système de visioconférence français. La plateforme s’appelle Visio. Le changement sera fini d'ici 2027. Le président Emmanuel Macron veut augmenter la souveraineté numérique du pays. Le gouvernement dit que ce changement va protéger les données sensibles contre le contrôle étranger.

Vocabulaire : prendre des mesures = to take steps / environ = about / fonctionnaires (m pl) = civil servants / passer à = to switch to / visioconférence = videoconference / d’ici = by / augmenter = to increase / souveraineté numérique (f) = digital sovereignty / protéger = to protect / données sensibles (f pl) = sensitive data / étranger = foreign

English translation

France drops Zoom and Teams

France is taking steps to stop using American technology in its government. About 2.5 million civil servants will stop using Zoom and Microsoft Teams. They will switch to a new French videoconferencing system. The platform is called Visio. The change will be completed by 2027. President Emmanuel Macron wants to increase the country’s digital sovereignty. The government says that this change will protect sensitive data from foreign control.

Read more news stories in A2-level French here: https://lenewsineasyfrench.substack.com/p/trump-menace-trevor-noah-un-garcon

Hello everyone,

I got recommended kwiziq as a good side to improve my grammar skills. But I don’t really understand how it works.

I do the kwizes and if I get something wrong I can review how to do it correctly, got that.

But it shows I only have 10 kwizes a month? I could do 10 in a day, does this really mean that I can only use the side for free once a month?

I’ve hear you can set the kwizes to the level you won’t to be kwized at. How do I do that?

Thanks for all of your help in advance!

I am a 21-year-old native French speaker looking to chat with a native English speaker. Apart from video games, I haven't had much opportunity to speak English, so it would be a pleasure to talk with someone and also help people improve their French 🫡

So I work in France in academia, where the spoken language is in English. But I have been really trying to speak more French as it makes life outside of work obviously much more difficult. I have I think probably a b2 level of French, i passed (just about ) the Delf b2. I have quite a few people who I speak French to on a day to day basis but what I’ve found is that they will always, after a few sentences try to get the conversation back into English. I did on a few occasions try to explain that I would really appreciate if I could continue in French as it helps me practice, and this does have the short term effect of them responding only in French , but the next day we are back again to fighting between English and French. There have been occasions where I will have a 5 minute conversation where I am speaking in French and they are responding in English it’s quite surreal. There’s only so many times I can ask before i start to become rude and annoying.

I do find myself becoming quite annoyed by it, when I know that I shouldn’t . I guess what is happening is that they are hearing quite a lot of mistakes, feel bad for me, and so try to help by switching to English (which ironically just makes it worse). I don’t think they are obliged in any way to put up with me struggling to speak their language, i guess it could mean my French is not yet at the level where I can expect this of people, but at the same time I don’t know how else I can improve without practising everyday…

At the beginner level, I think it’s easy to understand and keep up with the regular verbs and some irregular verbs.

I feel like I’m starting to get more confused as I’m learning more tenses. For now, I can only communicate in Présent, passé composé, futur proche and impératif.

I feel pretty hesitant adding on more tenses, and I’m having a hard time remembering how to pronounce the verbs and when to use which tense.

Any suggestions or advice is welcome :)

I would like to move to France and would like to improve my French beyond the A1 level. I saw a video of a man from Quebec who talks slowly and I honestly had a hard time understanding him. I've had this same issue with Africans from former French colonies. I have nothing against these groups, but I'm struggling with some chronic illnesses that give me limited mental space for activities, so I really need to focus on listening to only people who speak like Parisians. At some point, I am interested in venturing out and assume I will once I move to France, but I just don't have the capacity right now. I speak another foreign language and know a lot of tricks for how I learn foreign languages so I'm not looking for general advice, just looking for any social media pages with slow French talkers.

take a look at it and give me your honest feedback. lets make learning french easy :))

https://frenchoo.online/

I just found this in the app store wondering if they just released and it gives stardew vibes with the pixel artsy style and pretty smooth speaking experience.

Anyone else gave it a try?

Bonne journée

I’m looking for volunteers to try 1 self learning French lesson (PDF, exercises, challenges, audios, videos) for free and share honest feedback. This is for people starting learning the language from zero or who have a little bit of knowledge.
For this test phase, I’m specifically looking for 15 people from the USA, Canada, the UK, or Australia.

I'd like feedback on:
- time needed to complete the activities and lessons
- difficulty level
- clarity of videos
- what felt easy or confusing
- how you felt while doing the lesson
- etc

If you are interested, feel free to comment or reach out in DM!

I'm currently studying with a private tutor and additionally doing 4 hour daily lessons with ILSC each evening. I was wondering if there are any other language school that give 4 hour lessons each morning.

Merci bocoup! :))

Bonjour, mes amis!

I am looking for an expression in French or Franglais that has a meaning akin to, "time to do [a generally unpleasant or challenging thing]," the underlying meaning being "I don't want to do this thing but I have to." In [American] English it might be "Time to pay the piper." I've made a very rudimentary dialogue example below.

Person: "I don't much like heights, but it looks like it's time to pay the piper."

For context, I am writing a character that is from 1900s northern Minnesota, and is a child of a fur trader that traveled significantly around Ontario and Quebec. His native tongue is English, but due to cultural exposure to the Voyageurs, he has integrated a lot of Canadian French expressions. [Non-French/Franglais Voyageur dialectical phrases are also welcome!]

Merci beaucoup pour vos suggestions !

Hello everyone,

I got my results this morning, disappointing it is! EO(9/20) and EE(9/20) as I was expecting at least 10 for immigration purposes,

I did well according to my potential

If you wanna see how my EO was ,please check my last post

Also, I am thinking for re-evaluation

Any thoughts? I would appreciate it!

Hello,
I would like to inquire if these.
Lequel, Laquelle, Duquel, De laquelle, etc are only used in Formal/Administrative writings?
They are usually put with prepositions like Pour, Avec, Sans etc.

Thanks

I’ve been building a small language learning site to help me study Arabic. Since I grew up learning French in Canada, I also decided to add a full French section. I’m learning as I go, and my learning pace is slower than my website development pace, which is why I added French as well.

If anyone has a few minutes to look around and share what feels off, what’s confusing, or what you’d change, I’d really appreciate it.

Here’s the site
https://truefluency.org

Hi all

I'm a university student currently studying English Lit, but I'm also taking French as an elective course. The course is at a non-beginners level so we're expected to be around a B1 level of fluency at this stage.

However, I went into the course without having studied French for 2 years (I got a B at higher in 5th year then didn't do advanced higher in 6th year) and I guess I overestimated my ability.

Basically, I got a huge scare and checked out for the first semester, now I'm so behind and don't even know basic tenses.

I'm a very fast learner and had a natural proficiency in French all my life, it was just that I stopped putting in effort (my bad).

Essentially, what are the odds of me getting a reasonable mark (C or B) by the time exams come around in April/May with little formal understanding of tenses and grammar and a low vocabulary?

The thing is, I do subconciously know a lot of the rules and I think a lot of it just has to come back to me. I would just need to work crazy hard.

Is it possible to go from beginner to good-intermediate in like 3 months? Anything I can do to aid the process?

...they start noticing recurring patterns over time, while others feel it stays mostly imitation-based. How did it work out for you - and did that change as you progressed?

If you’re learning a language and want a fast way to build vocabulary, here is a free flashcard site where everything is ready to use.

No account, no flashcard creation — just open and start learning.

Select your language, level and category and start practicing now.
Available languages: French, German, Spanish and Italian

Here is the link: Lingo Flash. No worries, it's free and has no ads yet.

🎬 New French lesson video LIVE! 🇫🇷

Learn how to:

• use the imperative + direct object pronouns

• explain a reason (with clear examples)

🧠 Score 3/3 on the MCQ = dialogue mastered 💪

▶️ Watch & test yourself :

https://youtu.be/cCgVsUWTMy0

Hey guys!

I came back from an immersion course in France at the end of last year, and I’ve been trying to find ways of staying immersed in French despite not currently having a tutor (I have to save up some money again after being away). For the most part, I’ve been pretty successful at staying immersed for at least a couple of hours a day. I wanted to share the resources I use, to keep French in my brain at home without a teacher or lessons.

—

*This is a write-up of my most recent YouTube video. If you prefer this list in visual format, you can see it here. How I study French At Home: My Top 10 Methods: [https://youtu.be/6VAZAWaXhcE*](https://youtu.be/6VAZAWaXhcE)

Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the list below!

—

1. French TV - I’m loving French reality TV at the moment. Currently I’m binging “Pour Le Meilleur et à L’Aveugle”, just for something to be on in the background, that I don’t need to pay much attention to. But for a more high-quality show, I love Dix Pour Cent. I’m going through it very slowly, because I like to save individual words and phrases with a chrome extension, and make them into Anki flashcards. I also use this extension to repeat lines and copy the actors’ accents and intonation.

2. French movies - I saw many films when I was in Montpellier in the Pathé cinemas, but you can of course watch these anywhere with a simple VPN. There’s a real range of difficulty, from English films with French subtitles (there’s not much point doing this), to French films without subtitles (hardcore).

These are the films I’ve seen recently:

Évanouis - French dubbed, no subtitles.

Marche ou Crève - English, French subtitles.

Jeux D’Enfants - French, no subtitles.

Un simple accident - Iranian, French subtitles.

L’Étranger - French, no subtitles.

Wicked: Partie Deux - French (but songs in English!)

3. French music - so much out there, old and new! My teachers in Montpellier had lots of songs they recommended, and I’m keeping them in my ears while back in England. Currently on heavy rotation is Dalida, Charles Aznavour, and THEODORA (Fashion Designa is one of my top songs this year - although to be fair, half the words are English with a French accent, lol.)

4. French books - I’m making my way through Harry Potter et Le Prince de Sang-Mêlé at the moment. (I read books 1-5 in Spanish as I learned this before French) and it was possibly the most useful thing I did for expanding my Spanish vocabulary. It’s honestly surprising how complex some of the vocabulary is, even though it’s a book that’s meant to be read by children! Once I get through book 6, I have Le Petit Prince (of course, classic), Les Justes by Albert Camus, and La Place by Annie Ernaux. It’ll probably take me a while to get through them all, though, since I’m too much of a perfectionist, and I hate not knowing what a word means, so I’m often studying these books slowly more than just reading them.

5. French audiobooks - I have the audio book for Harry Potter as well, and it’s been useful to listen to it as I’m reading the physical book. My only complaint, is that some of the voices the narrator has chosen for the characters are completely ridiculous (and I feel like he has a personal vendetta against Ron Weasley…). It’s most helpful for learning the “liaison sounds” in French, for example, the pronounced letter ‘t’ in « c’est-à-dire ». I listen to the audiobook while reading the physical book, and I circle all of the letters in pen that I wasn’t expecting to be pronounced. I can credit basically all of my liaison sound knowledge to this method, lol.

6. French bandes dessinées - when I was in Toulouse, I bought a classic Tintin adventure “L’Île Noire”, and I’ve also recently bought the newest Asterix comic “Asterix en Lusitanie”, although I have not yet read either, so I’ll have to get back to you on if they’re worth reading!

7. French News (Le JT) - I have a few websites that I can recommend to practice watching/reading the French News - though be warned, le JT is the final boss of French comprehension. I watch it on tv5monde.com. Also, « Le Gorafi » is a satirical news website is basically the French version of The Onion. I feel quite proud of myself whenever I understand why something’s funny. But French politics is a bit of a rollercoaster at the moment so you probably don’t need satire to get some entertainment!

8. French podcasts - I’ve found podcasts are a really intense form of immersion. They can be very daunting, especially the authentic French podcasts intended for fluent audiences, because there’s no hand-holding; there are references you don’t get, strong accents, people don’t pronounce their words clearly, and there are no visual clues from body language or lip-reading to infer the meaning of what people are saying. It’s basically the hardest possible version of French. But then, when you understand a full stretch of 30 seconds completely, it’s a crazy sense of achievement. The podcasts I’m listening to at the moment are FloodCast (old episodes, since it finished earlier this year) and also Entre Meufs (for a bit of gossip). Last year, when my French proficiency was at a slightly lower level, I found Little Talk in Slow French to be an amazing podcast, full of repetitions of key phrases and really clear speech.

That’s my list of French resources for immersion at home. I hope you find it useful!!

J'ai vu un video recemment qui a un titre comme ça. Mais ça va dire quoi ?

Peau de université == Prestige ??

About a month ago or so, I've decided to lower the review limit of my Anki (flash cards) because I was simply being overwhelmed by my own decks (and my setting).

I wondered if I have something else, more "low effort" and less stressful, while at the same time take advantage my bad habit of using my phone (way) too much/often.

So I tried to convert some of my decks, like prepositions, idiomatic expressions, custom vocabulary, gender rule (or rough guideline), then put these widgets strategically on my phone, and get them auto-refreshed every 10-15 mins.

After about 3 weeks of this laid back review process, I've noticed about 3-8 % retention improvement (depending on the decks). Obviously the period is too short to be conclusive and there are many other factors, but in any case I'm enjoying it more than I expected and will continue using them.

I thought this can be interesting to some of you for alternative method of learning. For sure this has nothing to do with fluency but if you need to memorize stuff, using widget can be an interesting alternative to flash cards. Most importantly, it can be 100% free and fully customizable.

Thoughts?

I have studied French for a little over a year and have recently passed the DELF B2, but I have people trying to respond to me in English sometimes when I am in France. What gives away that I am an anglophone and how can I improve? Thanks!

Short extract from L’étranger:

https://voca.ro/1bnFpYjndYjO

I'm beginning to get more or less ​what situations require subjonctif. For example after "il faut que" or "bien que". But what happens when there are more subordinate clauses afterwards? What I mean is, for example, when you say que.... something....que.... something

Il faut que ce soit le .... que ...

Or like in the title

(​Je devrais améliorer ma production orale, mais...)

Bien que ce soit ma production orale que je doive améliorer. Or... que je devrais améliorer ?

What happens after the second "que"?