French: Words by Level

This is a reference, not a lesson: 664 French words, sorted by level and then by topic, each with its meaning, a short example sentence and a play button. Search it in either language, narrow it to one level or one topic, and when you have a list you want to learn, press Practise these to turn it into flashcards that come back on a schedule.

Your device has no French voice, so the play buttons are hidden.

What A1, A2 and B1 mean

The levels come from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), published by the Council of Europe and used for courses and exams across Europe and far beyond. The CEFR describes what you can do with a language at each stage, in six steps from A1 to C2. It does not publish word lists; the lists here are our own selection, sorted by that same idea of what you need first.

Level	In plain words, you can
A1 beginner	Understand and use everyday expressions and very simple sentences: say who you are, ask and answer simple questions about where you live, people you know and things you have, if the other person speaks slowly and helps.
A2 elementary	Handle routine tasks that need a simple exchange of information: family, shopping, work, getting around. Describe your background and your surroundings in simple terms.
B1 intermediate	Follow the main points of clear speech on familiar things, manage most situations when travelling, write simple connected text, and describe experiences, hopes and plans, giving brief reasons for your opinions.

So the A1 words are for survival and daily life, the A2 words for routine, and the B1 words for opinions, work and travel. Moving up a level is not only more words: it is doing more with them.

How the list is built

The words were chosen by judgement and then checked against a published frequency list, so that common words come first and rare ones wait. A few useful words that are not very frequent are here anyway because you need them early: numbers, days, months, a word for the chemist. Every example sentence was written for this reference and kept short, so you can say it in one breath.

Nouns are shown with their article, so you learn the gender with the word: la semaine, not just semaine. Where a word has no article in the list, a small tag gives its gender. Learning the article now saves you from guessing later, which is far harder.

The 150 words of the first French deck are all here, marked deck, with the same meanings and example sentences, so the two never disagree.

French nouns are masculine or feminine, and the article is the easiest way to remember which: le for masculine, la for feminine. Before a vowel or a mute h both become l’, which hides the gender, so those nouns carry a small m or f tag instead: eau is f, hôtel is m. Days and months usually go without an article and carry the tag too. Where Belgium, Switzerland or Quebec use a different everyday word (septante, souper, courriel), the note names it.

The words

Type in the box to search French and English at once; accents are optional when you search. Choose a level, a topic, or both. Each topic opens to show its words.

Practise a list

Practise these takes whatever the list above shows, one level, one topic or the results of a search, and makes flashcards from it. The scheduler is the one the first French deck uses: see the card, try to recall, reveal, and grade yourself honestly. Again brings it back in a few cards; Hard, Good and Easy push it one day, a few days or more into the future, and each success widens the gap.

New cards are limited to ten a day by default, across all your lists, so the reviews never pile up. A good set is twenty to forty words: one topic at your level is about right. Start with French to English, which is recognising; switch to English to French once the words feel familiar, because producing a word is what you need when you speak.

Using the list well

• Take a topic, not the alphabet. Words about the same scene support each other: learn the kitchen together, the station together.
• Say the example aloud. The sentence shows how the word behaves, its article, its preposition, its place. Play it, then say it back.
• Make one sentence of your own. For each new word, one true sentence about your own life. It is the quickest way from knowing a word to using it.
• Grade honestly. If you hesitated, press Hard. A flattering grade sends the word too far away.
• Come back to B1 when A2 feels easy. The higher words lean on the lower ones.

What sticks

• A1 is survival and daily life, A2 is routine, B1 is opinions, work and travel: the CEFR's levels describe what you can do, not a fixed list of words.
• Learn each noun with its article; it carries the gender you will need for every adjective.
• Search, filter, then practise: any list you can see can become a short deck.
• Twenty to forty words at a time, ten new cards a day, reviews first.
• A word is learned when you can use it in a sentence of your own, not when you can recognise it.