French Vocabulary Flashcards

This deck targets the words that show up most often in real French, organized into the themes most learners need first: greetings and introductions, numbers, dates, and time, food, restaurants, and shopping, travel and transportation, family and relationships, work and study, weather and small talk, the most common -er, -ir, and -re verbs, and everyday expressions and idioms. Every noun comes with its article (le, la, l') because gender is part of the word in French and learning them apart slows you down.

The free preview shows five sample cards. Inside Sticky you get the full deck, scheduled with spaced repetition so each word returns just before you would forget it. Sticky handles both translation directions automatically (French→English and English→French).

French rewards a slightly different approach than other languages because pronunciation, gender, and silent letters are baked into the words themselves. Build cards that reflect that:

1. Learn nouns with their article from day one. "Le pain" and "la table" are easier to recall than trying to remember gender separately. The article becomes part of the word.
2. Add a pronunciation cue to every card. French spelling does not match how words sound. A short audio clip or a phonetic note ("aujourd'hui = oh-zhoor-DWEE") prevents you from learning the word incorrectly.
3. Group verbs by conjugation pattern. Regular -er, -ir, and -re verbs follow predictable patterns. Once you know the pattern, you do not need a card for every single conjugation, just for the irregular ones (être, avoir, aller, faire).
4. Review for 15 to 20 minutes daily. The spacing effect is what makes vocabulary durable. Short daily sessions beat long weekend grinds.
5. Pair flashcards with listening practice. French liaison and elision (when "le ami" becomes "l'ami") only become natural through hearing native speech. Cards build the lexicon, podcasts and TV build the ear.

The honest numbers for real-world French:

• ~300 words: covers about 65 percent of written French. Survival level for travel and basic interactions.
• ~1,000 words: enough for everyday conversation on familiar topics. Realistic 6-month goal with daily flashcard practice.
• ~3,000 words: enough to read most journalism, follow most native-speaker conversation, and understand most film dialogue with effort. Around 12 to 18 months of consistent work.
• ~5,000+ words: comfortable fluency. Watch films without subtitles, read novels, hold extended discussions.

French shares many cognates with English (information, important, possible) so the first 1,000 words feel faster than they would in a less related language. Take advantage of this by front-loading high-frequency cognates early in your deck.

Vocabulary is the area of language learning where flashcards have the strongest evidence base. Active recall forces your brain to produce the French word rather than passively recognize it, and retrieval is what makes a word usable in conversation.

Spaced repetition addresses the bigger problem: forgetting. Without a system, half the words you learned last month have already faded. With one, each word returns at intervals (a few days, a week, two weeks, a month, three months) precisely tuned to how memory actually works. After a year of daily practice, you have a real working vocabulary, not a list you crammed and then lost. For a deeper look at how this approach applies to language learning specifically, see spaced repetition for language learning.