Essential phrases, verbs & vocabulary to know.
Basic French phrases for travel, the most important verbs, and the everyday words you actually use — learned with spaced repetition.
French is the most studied second language in the world after English, and there is a reason: the smallest investment — the first hundred or so essential phrases — returns the largest share of real-world usefulness. This page is the starting point: the basic phrases every beginner should know, the verbs that show up in nearly every sentence, and a clear way to commit them to memory.
Essential French phrases to know
Twenty phrases covering greetings, courtesy and the survival vocabulary you need for a first trip or first conversation. Learn them as whole units — before worrying about conjugation.
“Learn the phrase whole. L'addition, s'il vous plaît will get you further than any verb table.”
Whole-phrase learning front-loads usefulness: you sound natural on day one and back-fill the grammar later, once the pattern already feels familiar.
Ten verbs every beginner should know
French sentences are built on a tiny handful of high-frequency verbs. Master these ten and you can construct most basic sentences — the rest of fluency is mostly adding vocabulary and tenses on top.
How Vocabingo teaches French
Vocabingo gives you the 2,000 most-common French words in strict frequency order, scheduled with the SM-2 spaced-repetition algorithm. Each word returns at the moment your memory is about to fade — so retention compounds without you ever having to cram. Every phrase comes with an example sentence in real French, not a textbook fragment.
Frequently asked questions
Around 100 high-frequency phrases will carry you through almost every basic interaction - greetings, ordering food, asking directions, shopping. The first 1,000 most-common French words cover roughly 80% of everyday spoken language, so a curated beginner list is the highest-leverage place to start.