Is the whole course really free?

Yes. All 30 lessons are on this site with nothing to sign up for. We sell langNote, a separate paid app, and every lesson suggests using it — that suggestion is the only thing being sold here.

Can you actually learn French in 30 days?

You can complete A1, which means holding a simple conversation about yourself, your day and your plans. You cannot become fluent, follow native-speed speech or read a newspaper. The box at the top of this page lists both halves.

How much time does it take each day?

20–30 minutes, and the lessons are built around that. Days 7, 14, 21 and 30 are review days and run closer to 40 minutes because they are tests rather than new material.

Do I need anything to start?

No. A way to hear French helps a lot — any text-to-speech will do — because the respellings in these lessons are approximations and three of the sounds cannot be written in English at all.

Is this suitable for complete beginners?

Yes. Day 1 starts at the alphabet and assumes no French whatsoever. It does assume you read English fluently, since every explanation is built on the contrast between the two languages.

What comes after day 30?

Day 30 names three routes: more tenses (imparfait, real future, conditional), immersion in French media, or sitting the DELF A1 exam. The realistic one for most people is immersion, which is what langNote is for.

30 Days of French

Last revised: 2026-08 · 30 lessons · about 14 hours in total

Thirty lessons, 20–30 minutes each, taking you from the alphabet to holding a five-minute conversation. It is written specifically for English speakers, which changes what has to be taught: you already know thousands of French words without knowing it, and you have three sounds and one stress habit standing between you and being understood.

What 30 days does and does not get you

On day 30 you will be able to

Introduce yourself for a full minute without stopping.
Order in a café, ask for directions, buy a train ticket and complain about a hotel room.
Use the present, the near future and a first taste of the passé composé.
Recognise roughly 400–500 words and produce a good share of them.
Ask a stranger three questions and understand enough of the answer to keep going.

You will still not be able to

Follow a conversation between two French people at native speed. That is a separate skill and it takes months, not weeks.
Watch a French film without subtitles.
Read a newspaper. This course gets you to about 500 words; a newspaper assumes ten times that.
Use the imparfait, the conditional or the subjunctive — they are not in here.
Write anything longer than a few sentences without errors of gender and agreement.

What this is, and who wrote it

We make langNote, a paid app that turns your own study material into practice. This course is free, complete, and works on paper or on a screen with nothing installed — the lessons below are the whole thing, not a sample with the good parts removed.

The reason it exists is that it was written for a real 30-day attempt at French, and material written to actually be used is different from material written to rank. Every lesson ends with a note on how to run that day's page through the app, because that is how the author studied it. Ignore those boxes and the course still works.

The daily routine (20–30 minutes)

Read the lesson — say every example out loud. (8 min)
Do the exercises and check the answers. (5 min)
Today's 10 sentences, out loud, three times each. (5 min)
Practise the day's dialogue or drill. (7 min)
Optional: one conversation on the day's topic. (5 min)

One rule: never read silently. French spelling and French sound are far apart, and skipping the out-loud part gets you to day 30 able to read French and unable to speak it.

Why English speakers get a head start — and the tax on it

Roughly 28% of English vocabulary came from French. Words ending in -tion, -able and -ique are usually identical in both languages, and beef/bœuf, pork/porc and mutton/mouton are the same words twice. Several hundred words on this course need no memorising at all.

The tax is faux amis: words that look English and mean something else. A librairie is a bookshop, actuellement means currently, rester means to stay and la carte is the menu. They are marked with a warning in every lesson that contains one.

The harder half is sound. Three French sounds do not exist in English — the u in tu, the throat r in Paris, and the nasal vowels in bon and vin — and one habit gets in the way of all of them: English stresses the front of a word and French stresses the end. Day 1 is entirely about those four things.

The 30 lessons

Each lesson is a full page: tables, dialogues, pronunciation notes, exercises and answers. Start at day 1 — the later lessons assume the earlier ones.

Week 1 — Survival French

Greet, introduce yourself, ask a question.

Week 2 — Everyday life

Numbers, time, food, and ordering in a café.

Week 3 — Living in France

Directions, transport, shopping, asking permission.

Week 4 — Stretching the conversation

Present, past, future, and joining sentences up.

Questions

Is the whole course really free?: Yes. All 30 lessons are on this site with nothing to sign up for. We sell langNote, a separate paid app, and every lesson suggests using it — that suggestion is the only thing being sold here.
Can you actually learn French in 30 days?: You can complete A1, which means holding a simple conversation about yourself, your day and your plans. You cannot become fluent, follow native-speed speech or read a newspaper. The box at the top of this page lists both halves.
How much time does it take each day?: 20–30 minutes, and the lessons are built around that. Days 7, 14, 21 and 30 are review days and run closer to 40 minutes because they are tests rather than new material.
Do I need anything to start?: No. A way to hear French helps a lot — any text-to-speech will do — because the respellings in these lessons are approximations and three of the sounds cannot be written in English at all.
Is this suitable for complete beginners?: Yes. Day 1 starts at the alphabet and assumes no French whatsoever. It does assume you read English fluently, since every explanation is built on the contrast between the two languages.
What comes after day 30?: Day 30 names three routes: more tenses (imparfait, real future, conditional), immersion in French media, or sitting the DELF A1 exam. The realistic one for most people is immersion, which is what langNote is for.

langNote is a paid subscription and this course recommends it. The 30 lessons are free and complete either way.