French for English speakers: the mistakes I hear every week

English speakers make the same mistakes in French, in the same order, for the same reasons — and almost none of them are carelessness. Each one is a piece of English grammar arriving intact in French. That makes them predictable, which makes them fixable. These are one-to-one lessons built around the specific gap between the two languages, A1 to B2. A first lesson is thirty minutes for €20.

What is actually hard, in order

The hard parts of French for an English speaker are not the ones the reputation suggests. Gender is famous and nearly harmless. The genuinely difficult things are sounds English does not have, a register system English lacks entirely, and the fact that spoken French joins its words. Those three cause most of the trouble, in that order.

• Four sounds English does not haveThe u of tu, the r, and the nasal vowels of vin and vent. Your mouth has never made them, so it substitutes the nearest English sound — which is why tu comes out as tout.
• A politeness system with no English equivalentTu and vous is a decision English never makes, so it gets made by accident.
• Words that joinSpoken French runs syllables across word boundaries and drops others entirely. It is not fast — it is joined.
• GenderFamous, and the least of your problems. It marks you as a learner and it never prevents understanding.

The English grammar that arrives uninvited

Most early mistakes are one language's habits showing through the other. English says you are a state; French says you have it. English builds continuous tenses constantly; French mostly does not. Neither is a rule you failed to learn — it is a rule that fired correctly in the wrong language.

The four sounds, and why they matter more than gender

A wrong gender is a label; a wrong vowel is a different word. Tu and tout, dessus and dessous — above and below, opposite meanings, one vowel apart. That is why pronunciation is worth real time early and gender is worth almost none.

The u is the one to fix first, because it appears constantly and English has no neighbour for it. It is not "oo". The trick that works for most people is mechanical rather than auditory: shape your mouth for "ee", hold it, then round your lips without moving your tongue. That is the sound. It feels absurd and it is correct.

Register: the part no textbook covers

Register is not what a word means — it is who says it, to whom, and what happens if you get it wrong. Grave means "totally" and is fine with friends and career-limiting in a meeting. Du coup is said constantly by everyone under fifty and taught almost nowhere. This is the layer that separates correct French from French that lands.

Du coup is the clearest case of the gap. The Académie française, in Dire, ne pas dire, its published list of usages it considers wrong, holds that du coup is correct only for an abrupt, immediate consequence — and that using it in place of donc, the way it is used in almost every conversation in France, is an abuse of the language. Both things are true at once: the authority on French disapproves, and everybody under fifty says it several times an hour. That gap is what register means, and it is the reason a textbook cannot teach it — a textbook has to pick one of those two answers.

It is also the hardest thing to acquire from outside the country, which is where being taught by someone who lives here stops being a nice detail. I hear these every week, from people whose grammar is better than mine.

What the lessons do about it

Not a list of mistakes — production until the French pattern gets there first. Reading about j'ai chaud does not stop you saying je suis chaud. Saying j'ai chaud forty times does. Lessons are built around you talking, with the corrections split between the ones that stop the conversation and the ones you leave with.

1. We find out which mistakes are yoursThey are predictable as a set and individual in practice. Ten minutes of you talking is enough.
2. We drill the sounds that change meaningShort, unglamorous, and the highest-value thing most English speakers can do early.
3. You use the fixed version immediatelyThe repetition transfers. The explanation on its own does not.

What it costs

€60 an hour, VAT included, with no platform commission. A first lesson is thirty minutes for €20, credited against a package if you carry on. Nothing renews and there is no account to create.

Questions English speakers ask

See also: the mistakes in detail · when you understand but cannot speak · starting from zero · professional French · DELF preparation.