6 French Mistakes Every English Speaker Makes (And One That's Genuinely Mortifying)
Every French learner makes these. Every single one. I've heard them all from students over the years, and honestly, they're part of the fun of learning a language — as long as you know about them before they land you in an awkward dinner-party silence.
Here are the classics, and how to dodge them.
1. Translating word for word
The instinct to build a French sentence exactly the way you'd build an English one is completely understandable — and completely unreliable. French word order, especially around adverbs and objects, doesn't map onto English the way you'd hope. The fix isn't memorising more grammar rules in isolation; it's learning whole phrases and patterns together, so the right order becomes automatic rather than something you're constantly calculating.
2. Forgetting that nouns have a gender
Le table. La table. Does it matter? Enormously, apparently, to every native French speaker who will wince slightly and still understand you perfectly. Gender agreement trips up almost every English speaker, because English simply doesn't have this concept for objects. The honest tip: rather than memorising gender as a separate fact, try to learn every noun with its article from day one — "une baguette," not just "baguette." It sticks far better as a pair than as an afterthought.
3. "Actuellement" does not mean "actually"
This is probably the single most common false friend in the entire language, and nearly every English speaker falls for it at some point. Actuellement means "currently" or "right now" — not "actually." So if you're trying to say "actually, I've never been to Paris," and you reach for actuellement, you've just told someone "currently, I've never been to Paris," which is a strange thing to say about a fact that doesn't have a timeline. The word you want for "actually" is en fait.
4. "Sensible" does not mean sensible
In French, sensible means sensitive, not logical or practical. Call yourself une personne sensible thinking you're describing your excellent decision-making, and you've actually just told someone you're emotionally sensitive. Not wrong, necessarily — just not what you meant.
5. Mixing up "attendre" and "assister"
Attendre means to wait, not to attend. Assister à means to attend, not to assist. Swap them and you get sentences like "I waited the conference" or "I assisted the meeting" (as if you personally ran it), when what you meant was simply that you were there. Small mix-up, slightly confusing sentence.
6. Passer un examen ≠ passing an exam
In French, passer un examen means to sit an exam — not to pass it. So when a student proudly announces "j'ai passé mon examen," they've told you they took the test, not that they got a good result. The word for actually passing is réussir. This one causes genuine confusion between anxious students and their very confused parents.
And the one that gets everybody at least once: "je suis excité"
This is the classic, and I mean it when I say every single learner discovers this one the hard way eventually. In English, saying you're "excited" is completely innocent. In French, excité(e) carries a distinctly different, much more intimate connotation. Announcing "je suis très excité" about your upcoming holiday will not land the way you intended. What you want instead is "j'ai hâte" — "I can't wait." Learn this one now, and save yourself the moment later.
Made one of these mistakes? You're in excellent company. These slip-ups are a completely normal part of learning French — every single student of mine has made at least one on this list, myself included when I was learning English! I'm Mathilde, a native French tutor based in Sydney, and I love helping students learn the real language, quirks and all. Book a free 30-minute trial lesson and let's have a laugh while we get your French sounding natural.
