French
French that keeps up with you.
Four courses take you from your first sentence to real conversation. Everything around them — flashcards, graded stories, audio, someone to talk to — is generated at your exact level and rewritten as you improve. Nothing to outgrow.
Generated for you, in real time
What nobody tells you
You know the words. You don't know the rhythm.
English is roughly a third French already. You are not learning this vocabulary; you are collecting it. What you are actually learning is a way of moving through a sentence that English does not have — and that, not the vocabulary, is what makes French sound like French.
1066 did most of the work
The Norman conquest pushed tens of thousands of French words into English, and thousands of them are still spelled identically: table, village, nation, question, message, important, possible, service, silence, animal, restaurant. You can read those today without a single lesson.
The circumflex is a receipt
That little hat marks a letter French dropped and English kept — almost always an s. Forêt is forest, hôpital is hospital, île is isle, fête is feast, château is castle. Once you see it, a whole class of unfamiliar words becomes readable at a glance.
French has no word stress. English can't stop.
This is the single biggest tell in an English speaker's French. English drops a stress in a different place in every word — PHOtograph, phoTOGrapher. French doesn't stress words at all; it gives every syllable roughly equal weight and leans very slightly on the end of the phrase. Say French words with English stress and you're understood but instantly foreign, and no amount of vocabulary fixes it.
Words you already own
Thousands of words, spelled exactly the same
These aren't cognates you have to squint at. They are the same words, spelled the same way, sitting in both dictionaries — plus three endings that convert a few thousand more. The catch is that none of them sound the way you'd say them.
That last one is the warning attached to the gift. The overlap is enormous and so are the traps inside it, and the ones that bite hardest are the words you were completely sure of.
- restaurantres-to-RAHNrestaurant — same spelling, no final t
- importantam-por-TAHNimportant — the ‑ant is nasal, not «ant»
- universitéü-ni-ver-si-TÉuniversity — every ‑ty becomes ‑té
- sérieusementsé-ryeuz-MAHNseriously — ‑ous → ‑eux, ‑ly → ‑ment
- préservatifpré-zer-va-TIFcondom — not a preservative
The full path
Four courses, from your first sentence to conversation
One continuous story with the same characters from the first lesson to the last, anchored to an English ear rather than translated into one.
- 01A1
French from scratch
From the page to the ear: the five sound habits that carry the accent — nasal vowels, silent endings and liaison, u versus ou, the throat r, the vanishing e — then ten lessons of greetings, numbers, the city and getting around.
- 02A1 → A2
French on the move
Your daily life in French: the house, food, work, plans, what you did yesterday. The passé composé arrives here, along with which verbs take être and why that list is worth memorising.
- 03B1
French in depth
Opinions, hypotheses and stories: the imperfect against the perfect, saying what you would do, and the subjunctive in the places it actually lives rather than as a table to recite.
- 04B1+
French in flight
Argue and sound local: the spoken register nobody teaches, dropping ne in negation the way people really do, softening a request, and the difference between correct French and French that sounds like a person.
Already studied French?
Four years of school, and you freeze.
More English speakers have studied French than any other language, and almost none of them can hold a conversation in it. That's not a memory problem. School French is heavy on conjugation tables and light on hours of listening and speaking, so the knowledge is real and the fluency never got built.
It tells you where you're actually stuck
The placement test measures vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, listening and speaking separately. For people with school French the shape is remarkably consistent: grammar and reading well ahead, listening behind, speaking far behind. Knowing that is what stops you from re-studying what you already know.
There is no last level
The material isn't drawn from a catalogue that runs out; it is generated for you. As your profile climbs, the content climbs with it, all the way to C2. There is no final lesson to reach.
Conversation without an appointment
You talk by voice with partners who have their own personalities, whenever you want, for as long as you want. That mileage is exactly what school French never gave you, and it is the part a textbook cannot give you either.
What's included
Everything else is in French too
The courses are the backbone. Around them, Lemma generates new material at your exact level, every day, without running out.
Decks
The core of vocabulary. Flashcards by level and topic, with spaced repetition that shows you each word right before you'd forget it. Inside every card: an explanation in your language, examples, and answers — generated on the spot.
Spaced repetition + AIQuick Practice
Short readings and audio capsules, generated instantly, that mix the vocabulary you've already studied with new words to challenge you. Calibrated to your exact level.
Reading and listeningLibrary
Eight-chapter short novels, written by AI at your level, with cover art and an immersive reader. Pick the genre and the world. You'll never run out of something to read made just for you.
Immersive readingPartners
Create partners with different personalities and practice by text or voice. Real conversation that sharpens your expression — and gives Lemma a precise read on your progress.
Text and voice conversationWhy Lemma
This is not a streak app
The content is generated for you, not for everyone
A streak app hands you the same lesson it hands a million other people — and for French, that lesson is almost always beginner French, which you may well have done twice already. Lemma measures where you actually are and starts there.
Spaced repetition, not a daily quota
Every card comes back right before you'd forget it. That timing is what makes it stick. You're building memory here, not a streak — miss a day and you've lost a day, nothing more.
Built for the part after the beginning
Beginner French is a solved problem and the internet is drowning in it. The gap is everything after that, and it is the part Lemma was designed for: material that stays just above you, for as long as you keep climbing.
Frequently asked
About learning French with Lemma
Is French hard for English speakers?
The vocabulary is the easiest of any major language — English took a third of its words from French. The pronunciation is the hard part: nasal vowels, silent endings, liaison, and the fact that French has no word stress while English can't stop using it. Expect reading to run far ahead of speaking, and plan for that rather than being surprised by it.
Which French do you teach?
Metropolitan French — the standard of France, which is what the exams test and what most learners want. The differences with Québécois or African French are mostly accent and vocabulary; none of them stop you from being understood.
I did four years of French at school. Where do I start?
Not at the beginning, which is the mistake most people make. Lemma runs an adaptive placement test when you sign in and measures six skills separately. School French usually places well in grammar and reading and much lower in listening and speaking, and starting from that real profile is the whole point.
Why can I read French but not understand it spoken?
Because written French shows you word boundaries and spoken French deliberately erases them. Liaison links the end of one word to the start of the next, final consonants go silent, and unstressed e disappears — so a sentence you'd read easily arrives as one continuous sound. It's a listening problem specifically, and it responds to listening practice specifically.
How long does it take to learn French?
The US Foreign Service Institute puts French in its easiest category — roughly 600 to 750 class hours to professional working proficiency. That's full-time intensive study, so treat it as a floor rather than a forecast, but the ranking is solid: French is among the fastest languages an English speaker can pick.
How much does it cost?
Lemma Pro is 9.99 USD a month, or 109.89 USD a year, which works out to a month free. Lemma runs on a weekly usage allowance that resets each week; Pro removes those limits.
Can I study another language besides French?
Yes. Lemma has ten languages, and with Pro you can carry several at once from the same account, each with its own profile and its own progress.
Do I need to install anything?
No. Lemma runs in the browser on your computer and your phone, and you can pin it to your home screen like an app. You sign in with your Google account.
Say your first sentence today
Sign in with Google. Lemma finds your real level of French in a few minutes and starts there.
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