Episode 3: Easy Authentic Sentences from French Classics

On this page are short extracts, titles and sentences which occur in classic French texts and only use the vocabulary of Episode 3 of my Gnomeville comic book series, that is, 29 frequently occurring words in French text, plus exact cognates and names. (I may update this list periodically, when I find more things with my scripts.)

C’est une promenade !

C’est une occasion.

C’est impossible !
C’est impossible !

Est-il possible, madame !

C’est une tradition.

Avec la Nature ?

Est-ce possible ?
C’est possible.

Pour qui ?

Pour La Rochelle.

Succès certain.

Je signe !

Graves questions !

Je refuse ! je refuse !

C’est terrible, … terrible.

Dorian Gray ? Qui est-ce ?

Est-ce une allusion ?

Des Alpes !

Est-ce le major ?

J’examine l’immense horizon.

C’est long.

C’est excellent !

C’est un crime !

Ah ! c’est horrible ! horrible !

C’est Arthur Labarou.

C’est abominable !

Une affaire de police !

Et qui est-ce ?

C’est probable.

C’est un poète !

Un grand poète ?

Et que désire Porthos ?

C’est le présent.

C’est imprudent.

C’est admirable !

C’est impossible, c’est impossible !

C’est possible, madame.

Paris est tranquille ?

Nobles sentiments !

C’est violent.

C’est innocent.

C’est exorbitant.

Succès certain.

Affaires de police !

C’est juste ! c’est juste !
Ah !

C’est une superstition.

C’est une consolation.

C’est différent.

N’est-ce pas ?

Sire, sa place est vacante.

Ce n’est pas juste.

J’ai de l’imagination.

J’ai du courage.

Je continue.

C’est une affaire !
C’est une grave affaire !

Le reste est horrible !

Son crime !

N’est-ce qu’une intrigue galante ?

Pas possible !

C’est absurde !

Qu’est-ce que c’est ? qu’est-ce que c’est ?

C’est la France !

C’est impossible, Marie !

C’est extravagant.

C’est interminable !

C’est correct.

C’est certain !
C’est fatal !

C’est simple.

C’est original.

C’est brave !

C’est immoral !

C’est inexplicable !

C’est la morale.

C’est la nature !

C’est une injustice !

Est-ce que c’est possible ?

C’est sa nature.

C’est le moment.

C’est le principal.

Est-ce qu’il est content ?

C’est en vain.

C’est la vengeance de l’ art.

N’est-ce pas , Louise ?

Ce n’est pas extravagant !

Ce n’est pas terrible !

Ce n’est pas possible.
À cause de sa fortune ?

C’est inexact.

C’est intolérable !

Ce n’est pas la question.

C’est stupide.

C’est splendide !

Ce n’est pas le moment !

C’est évident.

C’est le lion du désert.

C’est amusant !

C’est détestable !

Oh ! c’est superbe !

C’est stupide , n’est-ce pas ?

C’est une infidèle !

C’est la Révolution.

C’est un américanisme.

C’est du latin.

Est-ce le chagrin ?
Est-ce un crime ?

Avec qui est-il ?

Est-ce une hallucination ?

Est-ce un spectre ?
Ah !

C’est Madame !

N’est-ce pas juste ?

C’est une science.

La science…
Qu’ est -ce que la science ?

C’ est une disgrâce.

Avec qui ?

Est-il optimiste ?
Est-il pessimiste ?

Il est absurde, n’est-ce pas ?

Ce n’est pas probable.

Pour le service ?

Avec les dames.
Ah !

Ah !
C’est l’usage ?

Dans sa prison, Sire.

Et avec qui ?
Oh !

Les troupes arrivent en Canada.

Au combat !
Marche !

Est-ce un air ?

Ah ! Ce n’est pas long !

Pour paris ?
Pour paris.

Est-ce la police ?

C’est la police.

Le document ! c’est le document !

Je brave la damnation.

Au galop !
Au galop !

Est-ce un général ?
Est-ce un prince ?

C’est une miss Blake , de New-York.

Avec le chauffeur !

La harpe !

Est-ce négligence ?

Oh !
Jane, c’est cruel !

Est-ce juste.

Est-ce magnétisme animal ?

Sa religion !
Protestant !

C’est juste.
C’est un brave home, n’est-ce pas ?

Est-ce une menace ?

On ne manoeuvre pas.

Est-ce papa ?

C’est papa ! c’est papa !

C’est une vengeance !

C’est une désertion.

Il n’est pas imbécile.

C’est Antonia et ce n’est pas Antonia !
Oh !

Est-ce un millionnaire ?

Qu’est-ce que l’idéal ?

Est-ce une insurrection ?
C’est une insurrection.

C’est un saint !

C’est terrible.
N’est-ce pas ?

Oh ! ce canon, ce canon !

C’est incontestable.

Ah ! princesse Marie !

Qu’est-ce ?
De qui ?

Impossible ! oh ! c’est impossible !

Avec madame ?

Je n’ai pas de parents.
Pas de parents !

Pour la France ?

C’est sublime !

C’est pure imagination !

C’est son bureau.

C’est un secret.

Ce marquis est un danger.

C’est incompréhensible.

C’est bizarre.

Ah ! que c’est bizarre !

Est-ce grave ?

Est-ce long ?

Oh ! c’est un gas !

Oh ! c’est une terrible alternative !

En route pour la Madame Hütte !
Ah !

Oh ! je tremble !

Avec sa fortune !

J’arrive de New York.

Est-ce exact ?

Est-ce regret ?

C’est grave ?

Est-ce certain ?

Du moment que c’est pour madame !

C’est justice , n’est -ce pas ?

C’est une opinion.

C’est une situation.

C’est un massacre.

C’est son affaire.

C’est la cathédrale.

C’est le théàtre.

Est-ce possible !
Nancy ! capitale de la Lorraine !

De qui est-ce ?

O Zeus ! les horribles convulsions !

Est-ce une vision ?

En route ! en voyage !

J’ai de l’ambition.

Attention ! je commence.

Est-ce qu’il est content ?

Est-ce que ce n’est pas de tradition ?

Qu’est-ce que c’est que des spéculations , papa ?

Qu’est-ce que le courage ?

Qu’est-ce que la patience ?

C’est un satin ?

C’ est un satin !
… Ah !
… Ah !

N’ est-ce pas ?
Il est adorable ! adorable !

Opinion de sir Francis Burdett sur l’union.

Mariage de Bonaparte.

La position de Lyon et son importance.

Oh ! c’est une sainte !

Ah ! ce n’est pas de la diction.

Son courage.

C’est un artiste !

Note sur l’article de M. Clouard.

Est-ce l’original ?

Ce mariage est impossible, madame !

Est-ce distraction ?

C’est regrettable.

C’est urgent.

C’est un voyage !

Ce point est important.

C’est l’impossible !

C’est dans la nature.

C’est colossal !

C’est suspect !

Il est artiste.

C’est une position en France.

C’est impossible, n’est-ce pas ?

C’est un miracle !

C’est le chaos.

C’est la table.

Est-ce un parent ?

C’est le guide !

C’est sa glorification.

C’est un clown !

C’est une religion.

J’arrive de Bretagne.

C’est son secret.

C’est son expression.

C’est un brigand !

C’est une passion.

C’est le prince.

C’est un affront !

C’est un martyr !

C’est le message !

C’est une question.

C’est le Temple.

C’est un original.

C’est un duel !

C’est un vice.

C’est la cause !

Est-ce une illusion ?

Est-ce un temple ?

C’est une abomination.

C’est une rage !

C’est la fortune !

C’est une supposition.

C’est le colonel.

Et c’est justice.

C’est le signal !

C’est un déluge !

C’est la débâcle.

Est-ce une profession ?

C’est la principale.

C’est un aristocrate.

C’est une fatigue qui n’est pas supportable.

Qu’est-ce que c’est que la civilisation ?

N’est-ce pas admirable ?

Est-ce le secret sombre ?

Qui n’est-ce pas ?

Ce n’est que justice.

C’est de la religion.

C’est le moment favorable.

N’est-ce pas abominable ?

C’est de l’injustice !

C’est un prince exorbitant.

Qui est ce saint Abraham ?

Le second, qui est-ce ?

C’est une horrible situation !

Est-ce de la justice ?

Il n’est pas terrible .

Et c’est en vain.

C’est de la farce.

C’est un danger public.

C’est Satan en personne ?

C’est le papyrus antique.

C’est terrible, ce silence !

N’est-ce pas horrible ?

Est-ce que je tremble ?

Ce n’est pas loyal !

C’est d’impatience , Parry.

Soprano, n’est-ce pas ?

C’est une véritable invasion.

C’est une seconde création !

N’est-il pas horrible ?

Qu’est-ce que le miracle ?

C’est de l’extravagance pure.

C’est stupide; c’est immoral.

Il arrive, n’est-ce pas ?

C’est l’unique solution probable.

Ce n’est pas un idiot.

Il n’est pas en danger.

J’adopte le plan d’Athos.

A Personal Rating of French Novel Readability

Lately I’ve been reading a range of books in French and thought I’d keep track of how difficult each was. My categories are: comfortable enough, difficult but the story kept me reading, difficult and I wasn’t motivated to continue. The decision to not continue was often made in the first two pages, and may not reflect the difficulty of the remainder of the book. For context, I passed B1 years ago with 23.5/25 for Compréhension Ecrite, and I’ve continued to read sporadically since, with a burst this year thanks to access to French books in Libby. Here goes…

Easy enoughToo hard but I kept readingToo hard and I gave up
Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamilloAmari et le Bureau des affaires surnaturelles by B.B. AlstonMaigret by George Simenon
Motel Calivista
(translated to Canadian French from English)
and
Les Trois Clés by Kelly Yang
Arsène Lupin (inspired by watching the TV series)
Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans WelchThe Sun is also a Star by Nicola Yoon
Repartir by Gordon KormanDragon Mountain by Katie and Kevin Tsang
Sabotage by Sigmund BrouwerLes Penderwick by Jeanne Birdsall.
Nish tome 1 by Isabelle Picard. I mainly put it here because of the québecois phrases, which are fine once you know what they mean. “Pis” is short for “puis” and is used pretty much like “and”.
La fabuleuse histoire de cinq orphelins inadoptable by Hana Tooke. This feels much harder than several of the above books.
M. Lemoncello by Chris Grabenstein. (I initially had this in the difficult and gave up category but have since read it.)
As-tu peur du loup ? by Véronique Drouin. (I initially had this in the difficult and gave up category but have since read it.)
Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat. This felt much harder than some of the others above.
Idéalis by Christopher Paolini. I really should give up on this book as it is way beyond my current level, and I have looked up more words than I normally allow. On the plus side, if you want science fiction vocabulary, you’ll find it in abundance here.

I will continue to update this page, since I think it will be useful for those wanting to choose books written for native speakers that are achievable. But what you should read depends on your current level.

For beginners, I recommend French comics written for language learners, followed by easy stories written for language learners (I like the Collection Découverte series by CLE International) and some very easy picture books for young children.

For early intermediate, look at stories written for language learners and start to explore comic books for native speakers of French based on your personal interests. There are a wide range to choose from.

The next phase is a mix of stories written for language learners and books written for middle grades. The J’aime Lire publications vary in how easy they are for a person with an English-speaking background to understand. Children’s novels translated from English to French are generally slightly easier than those that were originally written in French. If you have a favourite novel that you know well, reading it in French will be easier than reading a story that you don’t know well. Many people seem to like this approach but I prefer to read new things.

Penultimately, read novels for an adult audience. Again, translations will probably be easier on average than books originally written in French. Another approach is called “narrow reading”, where you focus on a single author or genre, so that you benefit from the larger percentage of vocabulary shared across books.

Finally, if it was your goal, try tackling the classic novels you are interested in, like Les Misérables.

(Page includes Amazon Affiliate links.)

Episode 2: Easy Authentic Sentences from French Classics

On this page are short extracts, titles and sentences which occur in classic French texts and only use the vocabulary of Episode 2 of my Gnomeville comic book series, that is, the twenty most frequently occurring words in French newspapers plus exact cognates and names. Even easier sentences are found on the Episode 1 page. (I may update these lists periodically, when I find more things with my scripts.)

Qui ?

Qui est Agostino ?

Qui est-il ?
… Oh !

Il change de place !

L’Europe !

Au railway !

En route !

Une avalanche ?

Au Louvre ?

Du cardinal.

De la patience, Athos.

Il est absent.

Du courage, Marguerite !
Du courage ?

Il est saint !

Il est excellent.

En vain.

Il ignore le riche, il ignore le noble.

L’addition finale.

Une simple promenade d’amateur.

Des biscuits !

Des sardines !

Il est dans un milieu abominable.

Ah ! L’animal !

Des talents !

De danger ?

Des convicts !

Des crimes !

Des dangers !

Est-il possible, madame !

Des documents ! Des documents !

Des brutes.

Il est à Florence.

Dans Paris ?

En prison !

Des conditions !

Dans la cave.

Il refuse ?

Et de qui ?
— Du cardinal.

De qui ?

Et de fatigue ?

Des regrets !
Ah !

On suppose !

En confession ?
Oh !

Dans le cabinet de Madame.

Des millions ?

Il est urgent .

Il est adorable !

Il est respectable.

On est content.

Il est en danger.

En Europe !

Arsène Lupin est en prison.

LA CIVILISATION EST EN DANGER !

À l’hôtel !

Fatale imprudence !

Il est simple.

Au lion !
Au lion !

Du champagne !

L’influence de Rome est incalculable.

Il est brave !

Il est probable.

Agitation dans Paris.

La nature est immorale.

Des excuses !

Dans un moment !
Oh !

Dans le corridor.

Il est intact.

De la passion !

Le portrait d’une dame !

Au camp !

Il est possible , et il est probable.

La force dans le calme…

L’absence !
Oh !

De l’humiliation.
De l’humiliation ?

Et dans la marine !

Dans un instant.

Des brigands !
Des brigands !

Du talent.

Ah ! l’abomination !

Ah ! l’innocent !

Il est parent de madame Von Lembke ?

L’inauguration du canal de Suez.

L’Obsession.

Ah ! l’horrible spectacle !

La Scene est à Rome.

Au club ! au club !

Il est riche.

La mission est secrète.

La contradiction est évidente.

Il est indulgent.

Dans un village de Normandie !

Oh ! l’ogre !

Il continue.

Dans la maison de Don Juan.

Hallucination de l’assassin.

Paris est en danger…

L’ instruction.
La cascade.

En France ! en France !

Il est timide !
Oh !

Il force l’attention.

Le théâtre d’Alfred de Musset.

Opposition au Code civil.

Des forces ! des forces !

L’empire.

Critique de l’ article de M. Rocheblave.

La statue est en bronze.

Il est original.

La confusion est extrème dans Berlin.

L’instant est grave, sire !

Il est ?

Il est.

Qui est ?

Il est le lion du village.

Il est extravagant.

Il est brutal.

Il est rare.

De qui, madame ?

Il est un dans la multitude.

L’occasion est favorable.

Un voyage en Portugal !

Le général Victor en Hollande.

La Statue est à Versailles.

Et il est à Paris ?

Le général est au camp ?

Et de qui est-il ?

Common One-Word Sentences in the French Classics

While exploring French readability and the fact that sentence length is a key factor for English speakers learning French, I thought I’d take it to the extreme and see what are the most common one-word sentences in French literature. Here is the top 20. Note that it is highly influenced by Les Trois Mousquetaires, which is a sizeable portion of the corpus and responsible for about half the occurrences of “diable”.

  1. Ah
  2. Oh
  3. Non
  4. Hélas
  5. Oui
  6. Quoi
  7. Eh
  8. Comment
  9. Pourquoi
  10. Diable
  11. Bah
  12. Tiens
  13. Amen
  14. Moi
  15. Bon
  16. Vraiment
  17. Monsieur
  18. Jamais
  19. Pardieu

In a different corpus less dominated by Les Trois Mousquetaires, the following were also found in the top 20:

  • Allons
  • Bien
  • Adieu
  • Rien
  • Jamais

In a modern corpus I think we would find different expletive-like exclamations than “Diable”, “Parbleu”, and “Pardieu”. A common one these days seems to be “Putain!”, or somewhat less extreme “Punaise!”. Maybe I’ll try to process the French movie subtitle corpus at some point to get a more up to date glimpse at one-word sentences in French.

A tale of three French picture books: passé simple is not that hard!

One of the weird things about studying French is that we seem to have three levels:

  • Beginners use present tense, imperatives, infinitives, and future proche;
  • Intermediate learners use passé composé, imparfait, future and conditional tenses
  • Advanced learners use passé simple and subjonctif

Yet, if we look at picture books written for French children, many use passé simple straight off.

I remember when I started reading (in English) in Grade 1 of primary school, one thing I had to get used to was constructs like “said Dora”. It doesn’t happen in spoken English, so felt a little weird. But it wasn’t overly difficult. Perhaps people from English-speaking backgrounds who had stories read to them would have been familiar with that already before reading it. The same thing must be true for French children reading or hearing passé simple. It’s a little different but not hard.

I recently read three French picture books. The first (Le Grand Antonio by Élise Gravel) was a fairly easy one with few words, written in present tense. The second (Quel est mon superpouvoir? by Aviaq Johnston) was a translation from English, written in passé simple (and imparfait). It was a comfortable read for me. The third (Dounia by Marya Zarif) was (mostly) written in present tense but was more difficult due to its vocabulary and more descriptive text. It is obvious to me that it is possible for texts in passé simple to be easier than those in the easiest tenses.

The thing is, you don’t need to know how to conjugate passé simple to read it. You just need to recognise the endings of third person singular (3ps) and plural (3pp) for regular verbs plus know a few of the irregular verbs. Here they are.

For -er verbs, 3ps ends in -a and 3pp ends in -èrent.
For -ir and -re verbs, 3ps ends in -it and 3pp in -irent.
You may come across a few -oir verbs, which have -ut and -urent.

The main irregular verbs to watch out for are:

être: fut, furent
faire: fit, firent
avoir: eut, eurent

The regular ones should not pose any problems. The avoir ones are recognisable thanks to already knowing the past participle of avoir (eu). The main difficulty is not mixing up the être and faire words. A simple rule is that faire has an ‘i’ in it, and so does its passé simple conjugation.

I hope that helps. It helps me.

Beginner French Resources

tldr: Easy French sentences from classics here.

Years ago I was tinkering with creating my beginner comic book in French, and then researching what made things easy to read in French for those with English speaking background. I learnt that the two main aspects that characterise text difficulty are grammar and vocabulary, with other aspects usually having a much smaller role to play. Through my own research, inspired by my own frustration and anecdotal experience, I learnt that for French the typical readability measures that use word length or even how common a word is for vocabulary difficulty just don’t work for people with English speaking backgrounds. This is because so many of the longer “difficult” words in French are identical to those in English, or close enough not to matter. My experiment demonstrated that you may as well just use sentence length to decide on difficulty, being the simplest measure of grammatical complexity. Despite this, vocabulary matters. It’s just that the words that are difficult are differently distributed than for languages that don’t have this peculiar French-English relationship.

In another of my experiments, I tried to filter a large collection of French text to find extracts that are easy for English speakers. While the extracts that are very easy are not long, they do exist. It’s a matter of playing around with the constraints to get something sizeable. It should also be noted that the text I used consists of French classics, which can be challenging to read. Anyway, it’s been a while since I looked at this. The other day I created a page on this site that contains all the sentences and extracts I found that restrict themselves to the vocabulary and grammar of Episode 1 of my comic book, (le, la, les, de, du, des, et, est, se, que, and present tense third person singular of -er verbs) plus cognates and names. I hope it is useful. More to come.

It’s not too late for your free beginner French comic from Amazon

Episode 2 of the Gnomeville beginner French comic book series is still available for free on Amazon until Friday. Episode 1 is still discounted on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in a countdown deal that increases every couple of days. I hope you enjoy it!

Freebie French Beginner Comic ebook Soon

Just a heads up. On Monday 17th March, Episode 2 of the Gnomeville beginner French comic book series will be available for free on Amazon for five days. Episode 1 will also be available at the minimum 0.99 price on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in a countdown deal that increases every couple of days. Mark the date in your calendar!

Excerpt from Episode 2 of Gnomeville: Dragon! – a series of comic books written in French for beginners with an English speaking background. Episode 2 only assumes that you know the following words that are covered in Episode 1: le, la, les, et, est, de, du, des, un, une, que, se. The story so far is summarised on the first page of Episode 2.

Comic Books versus Text-Only Books for Language Learning

Recently I have been reading a few comics in French, mainly by French-Canadian authors, or translated by them. The target audience for most of them is children and young adults. It had me thinking again about how best to grade comics in terms of difficulty.

My experience in attempting to read various Japanese books for children or learners showed me that it is possible to read a picture book that is really just an illustrated vocabulary without knowing any of the words beforehand. At the other extreme, it is theoretically possible to read everything in a parallel text, since the translation is right there to refer to, just very slow if every sentence needs to be analysed. That is known as “intensive reading”, which has been shown to be less useful than “extensive reading” for language acquisition. Complete glosses similarly make it possible to read a text without prior knowledge of the language, albeit with lots of interruptions to look things up.

Translations and glosses aside, a comic book will be easier than its text presented without illustration, since the illustrations provide clues to what is happening. It is also easier than text describing the same scenes provided by illustrations – a point that was made elsewhere in favour of learning language from comic books. In other words, “a picture paints a thousand words”.

In general, there is more dialogue and less descriptive text in comics, compared to novels, so the sentences are shorter on average. (This also applies to scripts of plays.) In addition, the pictures give clues as to what the text is about. A further benefit is that it often provides more examples of speech than would be found in a novel – or at least, as a proportion of the text read. This can be useful for absorbing speech patterns, particularly for people who are not exposed to much speech directly.

While the shorter average sentence length means that comic book text will generally be scored as easier than text from novels by readability measures, I think that a measure of difficulty of a comic may need to consider whether concrete nouns are illustrated when used. For example, a picture containing a wild boar with the text clearly indicating that it is “un sanglier” could be almost as easy as reading a French-English cognate, such as “village”. Or perhaps it is roughly equivalent to having a gloss entry, albeit introduced in the story instead of in a footnote.

Either way, comic books should be easier to read than books that have no illustrations. See my list of easy comic books in French for some that are a good starting point for beginners.