My Unconventional French Method: No Grammar Drills, Just "Cheat Codes"
My approach is a bit unusual mainly because of my language background. I'm a native Finnish speaker, and roughly 60% to 70% of Finnish vocabulary is influenced by Swedish and Old Germanic roots. Funnily enough, French was heavily influenced by those same Germanic roots, while Swedish was later influenced by French—meaning many words actually traveled into Finnish that way.
Because of this, I can recognize a surprising number of French words just by looking at them. For me, learning feels like having a secret cheat code! Words like rich (rikas / riche) and soap (saippua / savon) are directly related across both languages, which is fascinating to discover.
On top of that, I already understand Spanish at a comfortable level. That gives me an immediate, intuitive grasp of Romance grammar, Latin roots, and grammatical genders.
And since I'm fluent in English, which was massively influenced by French, I can pick up even more vocabulary from there.
Currently, I can read B1-level text with about 80% accuracy.
So, how did I get here?
First off, I started using Duolingo about four months ago. I’ve been doing it on and off, but I really try to maintain a daily habit because the consistency works well for me. I don't enjoy grinding or drilling grammar rules; instead, I prefer to immerse myself in the language and pick up patterns naturally as I go.
One form of immersion that has worked wonders for me is following creators on TikTok and YouTube. If you search "learn French" or "French language," you'll find hundreds of creators sharing vocabulary breakdowns, quick grammar tips, and hosting live sessions where they walk through reading and pronunciation.
This exposure is crucial for listening practice because written and spoken French have drifted so far apart over time. Old French was mostly written phonetically, but while the modern spelling remains anchored to how it was written hundreds of years ago, the spoken pronunciation evolved completely away from it.
Which brings me to one of my biggest secret advantages as a Finnish speaker: having native sounds for letters like Ö and Ä.
When I listen to French, I constantly hear those distinct Ä and Ö vowel sounds repeating over and over again. Since those sounds are already native to my mouth and ear, I don't need to struggle with learning how to physically produce them. My main challenge isn't making the sounds—it's simply mapping the connection between how a word is spelled and how it actually sounds out loud.
For example, once you realize that the French combination "eu" (like in the word bleu) is pronounced almost identically to the Finnish Ö, the spelling system suddenly unlocks!
Right now, thanks to immersing myself in TikTok live streams, YouTube videos, and leaning on AI whenever I hit a tricky French idiom, I can read B1-level text with about 80% accuracy. I understand the overall context effortlessly—I just need to look up specific vocabulary here and there as I encounter it.
So, my next step is to get a physical book, read through it, highlight the unfamiliar words, and work through the text page by page. I chose Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers) for this exact reason. Having already read it in both Finnish and English, I know the plot inside out, which lets me focus 100% on unlocking new French vocabulary in context.
I know my approach is very unconventional, but it works for me. Sitting down to drill grammar rules just isn't my style when you can immerse yourself in native content, listen to actual speakers, and absorb the language naturally as you go.