If you've landed on this page, you probably already know "learn French" returns a thousand contradictory blog posts. Most of them are either ad copy for an app, or generic motivational fluff ("immerse yourself!"). This page is neither, it's a concrete plan, built around the reality that French verb conjugation is the single biggest thing that separates beginners from intermediates, and most apps tiptoe around it.

The honest timeline

The U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which trains diplomats to professional proficiency, classifies French as Category I, the easiest language tier for English speakers. Their data:

  • 600–750 hours of classroom study to reach CEFR B2 (professional working proficiency).
  • ~30 hours to a basic A1 survival level (greetings, ordering food, asking directions).

For self-study at ~45 minutes a day:

  • 3 months → A1. You can introduce yourself, order in a restaurant, ask basic questions. Most verbs are still in present indicative.
  • 9 months → A2. You can have simple past-tense conversations. Passé composé is starting to feel automatic.
  • 18 months → B1. You can hold a real conversation about familiar topics, follow most TV with subtitles, write emails. Imparfait and futur simple are reliable.
  • 3+ years → B2. Professional / academic French. You can argue, abstract, and read literature. Subjunctive is automatic.

These are realistic targets at moderate effort. Cut them in half if you can put in 2 hours a day and have an immersion environment (partner, work, living in France).

The order to learn things in

Most beginners try to do everything at once and burn out. Here's the order that actually compounds:

  1. Pronunciation first (1–2 weeks). Learn the French sound system before you build bad habits. Focus on the 4 nasal vowels (an, in, on, un), the French r, liaison rules, and the silent endings (the -ent on ils parlent is silent). Resource: Coffee Break French Season 1 episodes 1–10, or any IPA chart for French.
  2. The top 100 verbs in présent (1–3 months). Not vocab. Not phrases. Verbs. The top 100 cover most of everyday speech, and once you can conjugate them in the present, the rest of the grammar slots into place around them. Start with these 30.
  3. Passé composé (1 month). The everyday past tense. Learn the avoir vs être rule and the irregular past participles together. → Full page on passé composé.
  4. Vocabulary expansion + listening (ongoing, in parallel). Now that you have verb chassis, vocab actually sticks. Watch one episode of a French show a day with French (not English) subtitles. Recommended: Lupin, Dix Pour Cent, or Radio-Canada news (Quebec French is clearer for beginners).
  5. Imparfait + the passé composé / imparfait distinction (1 month). The biggest grammar payoff of A2. → Imparfait · passé composé vs imparfait.
  6. Futur simple + conditionnel (2 weeks). Same stem, different endings, learn them together. → Futur simple.
  7. Subjonctif présent (1 month). Don't fear it. Learn the triggers, learn the 9 irregular subjunctives, the rest is mechanical. → Subjonctif.
  8. Speak with humans (week one, forever). If you can afford $40/month, get a weekly italki tutor from day one. If not, find a language exchange partner on Tandem. There is no substitute for production under social pressure.

The stack that actually works

You don't need 20 apps. You need 4 things, one per role:

  • Verb conjugation drill. Bonjour Verbs (our app, typed-answer practice across 2,000+ verbs and 14+ tenses). The free web practice tool on this site is a stripped-down version.
  • Vocabulary + sentence patterns. Duolingo for the first 6 months (it's good at exposure and habit formation, weak after that). Then Anki with a frequency-list deck.
  • Listening + comprehensible input. Coffee Break French (podcast), TV5MONDE Apprendre le français (graded video), then real TV (Netflix in French with French subtitles).
  • Speaking. italki community tutors ($8–15/hour). Once a week, minimum. Don't skip this.

What to ignore

To save you time:

  • "Learn French in 7 days" anything. Doesn't exist. You can learn 50 phrases in 7 days. You cannot learn the language.
  • Pure phrase-book apps (Babbel-style "I would like a coffee"). They give you the illusion of speed without the grammar that lets you actually compose new sentences.
  • "Don't study grammar" advice. You'll hear this from people who already know a language. Adults learn faster with explicit grammar instruction, kids don't, but you're not a kid.
  • Memorizing gendered articles in isolation. Always learn the article with the noun (le pain, not pain). The gender lives with the word.

The honest case for verb-first learning

French has 14+ tenses, 4 moods, irregular stems, gender agreement on past participles, pronominal verbs, and a subjunctive that's triggered by a list of phrases you just have to know. None of that is hard once you can conjugate the underlying verbs. All of it is impossible if you can't.

The reason most learners plateau at A2, "I can understand a lot but I freeze when I try to speak", is that they have decent vocabulary but can't produce verb forms under time pressure. Vocab is recognition. Verbs are production. The gap is exactly typed-answer drilling, repeatedly, across the tenses you'll actually use.

That's what we built Bonjour Verbs for. Free tier covers présent indicatif on the top 100 verbs plus a Custom Quiz builder, enough to start producing real sentences. Pro unlocks the other 13 tenses (passé composé, imparfait, futur, subjonctif and the rest) and all 2,000+ verbs.