Do you remember paint-by-number kits growing up? It was always a fun gift to receive because year to year you would get a few more colors and a more complex “work of art” to create. You might begin with 7 mini-pots of paint for a simple rainbow, move on to a dozen colors for a landscape or birds in flight, graduating to twice that many choices for a spring garden scene. Now I see that you can even design, print, and paint your own canvas with 60 colors. While those were fun, creative activities, the end result always seemed to be the same: it looked like a paint-by-number masterpiece; that is, you achieved your goal but it remained unpolished. What if you applied a similar principle to learning French?

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is a concept that states that, for many outcomes, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Examples that I have seen cited were that 80% of the time, you will wear the same 20% of your clothes and 80% of your footsteps fall on the same 20% of your carpet’s surface. For learning French that suggests that knowing the most common 20% of words in the language will allow you to understand about 80% of daily conversations and written text. Coincidentally I often read that you should strive to understand at least 80% of a story/conversation/lesson to feel as if you have mastered the topic.

In an endless search for that one magic method that will make acquiring French effortless, I daily consult that one source of all knowledge: YouTube. Given that I am subscribed to 17 channels devoted to learning the language and another dozen covering a variety of topics in French, it’s no surprise that the platform’s algorithms often have a new “For You” channel to suggest, with the most recent being Le French Café. According to teacher Muriel:

• Out of the 12,000 French verbs recorded, about 300 are really common in both spoken and written French, and only around fifty are enough to handle most everyday situations.
• In conversation, the present tense is used in about 60% of exchanges.
• A French dictionary contains over 100,000 words. Fortunately, only 3,000 to 5,000 words allow you to understand and express yourself in 80% of common situations. (And I’ve seen that number as low as 1000).
• The passé composé is used in over 90% of cases to talk about the past in spoken French.

Rather than listing here those 50 verbs and the 5 tenses that she says form the foundation of 90% of spoken and written French, I’ll attach 2 pdf documents below that provide the details. So, will this method leave you with a “paint-by-number” masterpiece? Perhaps, but that’s the point. In our opinion, the goal is to communicate. If by focusing on the essential 20% of the language, you can achieve 80% (or even 90%) of your communication goals, we think that’s a great result. 

Please note: This is not an endorsement of any particular learning method and we would have no monetary gain if you were to follow Muriel’s channel. It’s just an interesting topic of discussion.

Photo notes: You might need a certain level of French and a sense of humor to understand some of today’s signs. The featured photo is a warning sign at a train station in Luxembourg but the final line, out of context, could be saying that “any contact with the sons can be fatal”.

50 essential French verbs pdf

5 essential French tenses pdf