Learn French
French, with a hook on every word.
Spelling and sound diverge, so mnemonics key off the spoken form. Huge cognate overlap with English is worth exploiting first.
pain
bread
sounds like pain
A baguette so stale that biting it causes real pain, and the loaf is on fire. Masculine.
Sample hooks
What the first words look like
pain
bread
sounds like pain
A baguette so stale that biting it causes real pain, and the loaf is on fire. Masculine.
chien
dog
sounds like she-hen
A dog wearing a hen costume clucks at the postman. It is standing in a duck pond. Masculine, so set the feathers alight instead.
eau
water
sounds like oh
You drink a glass of water and can only say OH, because that is the whole word. The glass is submerged. Feminine.
maison
house
sounds like may-song
A house that only stands up while you sing the song of May to it. It is at the bottom of a lake. Feminine.
fenêtre
window
sounds like fun net
Someone has stretched a fun net across the window and the children bounce off it into the pool. Feminine.
livre
book
sounds like liver
A book bound in liver, dripping, that you have to read with gloves on. Burning. Masculine.
voiture
car
sounds like votre tour
A car horn that only says VOTRE TOUR, your turn, at every junction. Sunk to the roof in water. Feminine.
fromage
cheese
sounds like from age
A wheel of cheese with a birth certificate, aged FROM AGE zero, on fire on the counter. Masculine.
tête
head
sounds like tet
Two heads bang together and go TET TET like woodblocks. The pair are underwater. Feminine.
A story in French
What you will be reading first.
Le chien du train de sept heuresA1
Tap an underlined word. In the app the same tap also tells you whether that word is already in your collection and when it is next due.
French, specifically
French spelling and French sound are miles apart.
Which is why the hook engine folds the spoken form, not the written one. It also leans on the very large cognate overlap with English first, because those words are nearly free and there is no reason to spend a hook on them.
How many words are loaded for French?
121 to start, chosen by frequency, each with a gloss, a part of speech, an example sentence and a hook. You can import your own list on top at any point.
Is the audio real French?
The audio uses the voices installed on your own device, picked for French and set per sentence. On a modern phone that is good. On some desktops it is only adequate, and recorded native audio is the next content investment.
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