9 Awesome Reasons Why French is Easy to Learn

Do you know anyone who would say that French isn't a beautiful language?

Of course, not.

Everyone loves French.

Why wouldn't they especially when they have that romantic, passionate French accent?

Now, you've surely imagined someone speaking perfect French and you have goosebumps, right?

Apart from the beauty and fabulousness French has, do you think that French is easy to learn?

Or people would find it quite challenging?

We will present to you the reasons why is French easy ( or hard) to learn, and it's up to you to give the last word.

Let's get started.

Easy Vs. Hard Languages

How can one determine if a language is easy or hard to learn?

What makes one language easy or not?

Here are some key factors that determine the language difficulty:

• Your native language and similarity or difference with your target language.

• The number of foreign languages you speak. The more languages you speak, the easier learning a new one will be for you.

• Availability of learning resources. If you have many different materials and resources for learning a language, the process will be easier and faster.

• The possibility to immerse yourself in the language. Speaking and practicing with native speakers helps you become fluent quickly.

Reasons Why French Is Easy to Learn

When you start learning the language from scratch, almost every language seems easy.

That's because you are learning the basics, common words and phrases, and don't suffer from grammar rules a lot. From that point of view, French is quite easy to learn.

But, what about moving forward? Is French easy to learn even to achieve some advanced level?

The following reasons are here to help you find out.

But don't worry. Even if your overall expression may be different from the one you thought at the beginning, French tutors can help you master the language either way.

Reading in French

As much as this may seem odd, reading in French is quite easy.

Even if you don't know the exact pronunciation of a word, you can try to read it, and, believe it or not, you will likely succeed.

How is that possible?

Well, English and French have many mutual words, so the pronunciation of the words is similar, too.

The Similarity Between English And French

French belongs to the Romance languages and English is a Germanic language.

So, how do these two languages share the words?

Even though their languages aren't close relatives, during long history there was a strong influence on each other, especially after the Norman invasion in 1066 English uses many words that originally come from French.

So, even if you haven't started learning French, you already know many French words.

French Grammar Likes Rules

Grammar rules and exceptions are one of the inevitable parts of every language.

Some languages have strict grammar rules and patterns, and a few exceptions. French is one of them.

When you are learning grammar rules, sure you have to learn the exceptions, too, but it is far easier when you don't have so many exceptions that you have to memorize.

French Speaking Countries

If you want to practice French and improve your pronunciation, talking with real people is something that can help you with your language skills.

French is the official language in around 30 countries all over the world, so there is no better way than communicating with native speakers from French-speaking countries.

It is also the second most popular language for learning, and one of the official languages of the European Union.

Therefore, improving your speaking skills and building vocabulary in French is a piece of cake.

French And Its Relatives

Knowing French can help you learn other similar languages, or the other way round.

French is part of the Romance language family, and along with Catalan, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Galician, it is the descendant of Vulgar Latin.

This means that if you already speak French, you can easily learn other Romance languages because you are already familiar with the basics.

Do you remember what we’ve mentioned at the beginning about similar languages?

Here is apparent proof.

French Resources Are All Around You

As we’ve already mentioned, one of the things that can make French easier to study is the availability of learning materials and other resources.

French is among the top languages in this battle.

From learning French in entertaining to unconventional ways to learn French, so many great French movies, learning websites for students, learning French with music, and YouTube channels, you will have only one problem. You won’t know where to start first because you will be so fascinated with these different resources.

Is French Perhaps Hard to Learn?

For now, you are aware of the easy parts of the French language.

But, like any other language, French, too, has some tricky parts.

Here are some of them.

Pronunciation And Spoken French

Even though reading in French is relatively easy, there's one catch.

Some sounds can have the same pronunciation but they are spelled differently. For example, vowel sounds 'eau,’ ‘eaux,’ ‘au,’ ‘aux,’ ‘os,’ ‘ot,’ and ‘ault' are all pronounced the same.

How to succeed in learning this tricky part? Listening to the radio and French podcasts can be helpful.

French Subjunctive

Those who are already learning French surely get nervous when they hear the word 'subjunctive.'

It is one of the pretty challenging language parts.

The subjunctive is used to express uncertainty, which, again, include emotions, doubts, or possibility.

And that's not all. Depending on the case, verbs are conjugated in different ways.

But don't despair. You may understand it right away. Perhaps this post about French subjunctive mood can help you.

French Tenses

Unlike some other languages, French tenses can be challenging a bit, especially past and future tenses.

French has several past tenses. Some of them are ‘passé simple’ (simple past), ‘passé composé’ (compound past), and the ‘imparfait’ (imperfect). 

Passe compose describes an action that happened in the past, imperfect for actions that consistently happened in the past, and simple past tense is classic tense which you use for past actions.

As for future tenses, French learners are often confused between using ‘futur simple’ (simple future) and ‘futur proche’ (near future). If you want to use the first tense, you can use it when you want to talk about future actions or plans, similar to the future simple tense in English.

Futur proche is used to talk about the actions in the near future, similar to going to+infinitive in English.

Final Thoughts

You've probably figured out that French is a relatively easy language to learn.

In fact, all Romance languages aren't difficult to learn. So if you already speak Spanish or Italian, for example, learning French will be much easier.

French isn’t only one of the most beautiful languages in the world, but also one of the easiest ones to learn. Everyone who started learning French with French tutors, claims that he fell in love with French immediately.

And the main question you have to answer is: are you ready to fall in love with French?