Learning French in Québec when you are starting from zero

Start here: the courses Québec already pays for

The word to learn first is francisation — the government-funded French learning offered to newcomers and to other residents. Applications now run through a single door, Francisation Québec, described in the Learn French section of quebec.ca. That page is the authority on your file. This one is not.

Read the eligibility wording rather than a paraphrase of it, because people talk themselves out of applying for no reason. The government describes its French learning services as offered free of charge to persons 16 years of age and older who are living in Québec, who are not subject to mandatory school attendance and who wish to receive French learning services — and also to persons selected to immigrate. Separately, financial assistance is available to immigrants under certain conditions. No page on the internet can tell you the amount or whether you will receive it. Apply, and let Francisation Québec answer.

In person, full time or part time

These are real classes with a teacher and a group, and they are the format most people mean when they say francisation. There are separate admission processes for full-time courses and part-time courses, and separate pages again for persons born in Canada. Read the one that matches your situation.

Fully online, with a teacher

If your schedule or your region makes a classroom impossible, there are online courses with support, including a track for people who have been selected to immigrate but have not arrived yet. The admission conditions differ from the in-person ones, and some of them require a reference number from the ministry.

Self-study, no group, no waiting

The option most people miss. The ministry, with SOFAD, publishes a free self-study platform for absolute beginners at francais-enligne.quebec — described on the government's own tools and resources page as three modules totalling around 70 hours, targeting levels 1 and 2 of the Échelle québécoise. You can start it while your class application is still being processed. There are also job-specific courses by field of employment, which is a more direct route than a general course if your goal is work.

Find out your level before you buy anything

A free tool settles this: the self-assessment built and hosted by the Université de Montréal, listed on the government's tools and resources page. Each assessment is 18 to 22 questions, takes 30 to 55 minutes, and gives you a level on screen that you can download or print. It exists in thirteen languages — including English, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Punjabi — which makes it the most accessible official tool in the system. One caution the tool states itself: the result is not official, and will not serve as proof of level for an immigration or admission file. Treat it as a mirror, not a certificate.

Then there is the confusion that runs through every conversation about French here. Two level scales are in circulation, they do not map onto each other cleanly, and people quote numbers from both without saying which.

If you are starting from zero you are at levels 1 and 2 of the Québec scale — exactly the range the government's free beginner platform was built for. And when you see a number like level 7 in a forum post or an immigration checklist, the useful question is which of the two scales it belongs to. Requirements differ from one program to another, so check your own program's page on quebec.ca rather than a comment thread.

Is Québec French really different? The part that matters to a beginner

Yes and no, and the honest answer beats either slogan. The grammar is the same: a French course from anywhere in the world teaches verbs, agreement and sentence structure that work perfectly well in Montréal or in Rimouski. Three things change — some everyday vocabulary, the accent, and the one nobody explains to newcomers, the register of the words you pick up by ear.

Register is the difference between a word you can put on a job application and a word that is fine at the dépanneur and wrong in an email to a landlord. Free resources for newcomers either teach neutral international French and skip the local words, or celebrate the local words as colourful slang without saying which ones make you look careless in writing. Here is that missing information for seventeen words you will meet almost immediately.

Standard in Québec: write these without worrying

Colloquial: understand them, do not write them

Borrowings from English: replace them when you write

These groupings are our editorial calls; the authority is not us. It is the Vitrine linguistique of the Office québécois de la langue française, which gathers the Banque de dépannage linguistique and the Grand dictionnaire terminologique and is free to consult. Three of the six borrowings above have their own entry there, so you can check us: canceller, booker and bienvenue. Those pages are in French, which is itself a reason this table exists.

Ten everyday situations, in the order worth learning them

Beginners are usually handed grammar first and situations later. Reverse it. Ten scenes cover most of what happens to you in your first months, and each has a small closed vocabulary you can actually finish. Easiest and lowest-stakes first.

1. Greetings. Bonjour works all day, evening included. In central Montréal retail you will hear Bonjour, hi — you are never obliged to switch. Memorize one sentence: Je ne parle pas encore français, mais j'apprends (I do not speak French yet, but I am learning). It buys patience.
2. The dépanneur. Short, low-stakes, frequent: Je voudrais… (I would like), C'est combien ? (how much), Par carte (by card). The best place in Québec for your first conversation.
3. Eating. Get dîner and souper straight so you arrive at the right hour, then add pour emporter (to go), sur place (to eat in), L'addition, s'il vous plaît (the bill, please).
4. Getting around. autobus, métro, une correspondance (a transfer), and the question that solves most trips: Est-ce que ça passe par… ? (does this go via…).
5. Winter. Not decoration — the notices telling you to move your car are in French: bottes (boots), déneigement (snow clearing), poudrerie (blowing snow), tempête (storm).
6. Paperwork. un rendez-vous (an appointment), une preuve de résidence (proof of address), and one trap: a form is rempli, not complété.
7. Health. Vocabulary only, since the rules are not ours to explain: J'ai mal à… (it hurts here), une ordonnance (a prescription), la carte d'assurance maladie (the health insurance card).
8. The bank. un compte (an account), un guichet (an ATM), un relevé (a statement), des frais (fees).
9. The telephone. The hardest scene: no face, no gestures. Two sentences carry it — Pouvez-vous parler plus lentement, s'il vous plaît ? and Pouvez-vous répéter ? Add Appuyez sur le 1 (press 1).
10. School, if you have children. une rencontre de parents (a parent meeting), le bulletin (the report card), une classe d'accueil (a welcome class for new arrivals). Who attends which school is set by the Charter of the French language, so ask your school service centre rather than a neighbour.

Two rules make the list go faster. Hear every word before you write it, because French spelling will mislead you if the sound is not already in your head. And prefer a small vocabulary you own completely: fifty words you can produce under pressure beat five hundred you can only recognize on a page.

Do you actually need French? What we can and cannot tell you

You can survive in parts of Montréal in English, and pretending otherwise would insult your intelligence within a week. So the honest framing is not survival — it is what closes and what opens.

Two places where French stops being optional are documented and specific. To join a professional order — nursing, engineering and many others — section 35 of the Charter of the French language requires appropriate knowledge of French for a permanent permit, a condition that can be met by prior schooling in French or, failing that, by an exam administered by the Office québécois de la langue française. The official pages are the legal obligation and the OQLF assessment. If your career runs through an order, read them now rather than in your final year, and confirm with your order directly.

The second is school. To receive the DEC, students in Québec's collegial network must pass a uniform language exam. For most of them, and for practically every newcomer, that is the épreuve uniforme de français — the EUF, which anglophone students call the French Exit Exam: four and a half hours, a critical essay of at least 900 words, three criteria that each have to reach a C. A student at an English-language college writes the English exam instead only in three cases: holding a declaration of eligibility for instruction in English, continuing without interruption a program begun in English before Fall 2023, or an exemption based on residence in certain Indigenous territories. Newcomers are usually not eligible for instruction in English, so the French exam is the one that applies. If your path, or your child's, runs through a cégep, that exam sits at the end of it, and knowing so in year one is worth more than any vocabulary list. See How to pass the EUF.

What we will not do is tell you whether you can be hired in your field with basic French. That depends on your industry, your city and your employer, and anyone giving you a confident yes or no is guessing. The one concrete lever is the government's French courses by field of employment, which exist precisely because general French and work French are not the same skill.

Other free resources, and the catch with each one

Nothing on this page replaces the resources below, and several of them are better than anything we make. What is missing from the public conversation is not the list — it is the catch attached to each item, usually discovered after you have created an account.

The government's tools and resources page lists more, including occupation-specific course banks. Two honest notes about it: some links on official pages have gone stale, so if one refuses to load, that is the page and not your connection; and every substantial free platform here wants an account and an email address, which is a small thing unless you are still deciding whether to move at all.

Frequently asked questions