You’ve studied French for years. You can conjugate verbs, you can read articles, you passed your exams. But the moment you turn on a French movie, it sounds like gibberish.
Why?
Well, for a reason that your French teacher in school maybe never told you. And this reason has absolutely nothing to do with your ears, your age or your intelligence.
You see, the French you learned in school and the French spoken in movies are almost two different languages.
C’est parti.
The Two French Languages
Here’s a simple written French sentence, like you’ve learned in school and read in books:
Je ne sais pas. = I don’t know.
Now here’s how French people actually say it: “Chay pah.”
Half the syllables disappeared!
Your textbook taught you perfect, grammatically correct French. The kind that gets you an A on your exam. But when someone in a movie shrugs and mutters chais pas, your brain doesn’t recognize it as French. It registers as noise.
But it is French. Real, everyday, spoken French.
You just weren’t taught how to hear it.
So here are four things French people do when they speak — things so automatic they don’t even know they’re doing them. These patterns aren’t in any textbook. They’re not tested in any exam. But they’re in every single sentence you’ll hear in a French movie.
Rule 1: Disappearing “Ne”
You might have learned the correct way to create a negative sentence in French:
- [subject] ne [verb] pas
- ne… jamais
- ne… rien, etc.
That’s great, that’s how you write correct French and get points on your exam.
However. In spoken French, the “ne” disappears about 95% of the time. Like:
- Tu ne comprends pas. (= You don’t understand.) → “Tu comprends pas.”
- Ce n’est pas grave. (= It’s not seriously bad, it’s OK.) → “C’est pas grave.”
- Je ne veux pas y aller. (= I don’t want to go.) → “J’veux pas y aller.”
- Il n’y a pas de problème. (= There’s no problem.) → “Ya pas d’problème.” (or simply “Pas d’problème.”)
The rule really applies to almost all negative sentences in general.
And this isn’t slang. This isn’t “street French.” This is how everyone speaks — including your French friend’s grandmother at Sunday dinner.
So when you’re watching a movie and looking for “ne… pas, ne… pas” — you’re looking for something that isn’t there. That’s part of why it sounds impossible!
Rule 2: Chopped Sounds
As you might have noticed in our previous examples, a lot of letters get cut in spoken French. Especially weak “e” (especially in small, two-letter words), for instance:
- Je te dis que je ne le veux pas. (= I’m telling you I don’t want it.) → “J’te dis que je l’veux pas.” or “J’te dis qu’j’le veux pas.”
- Qu’est-ce que tu fais ? (= What are you doing?) → “Kes’tu fais ?”
Would we ever write it that way? No. But it’s absolutely a common way to pronounce these sentences.
If you don’t know this is coming, your brain hears “kesstufay” as one sound – no separation, pure confusion. This is why French movies feel like they’re on 1.5x speed. Not only do people often speak fast – they also cut half of the sounds you would expect to hear.
Now, if you’re watching this and thinking “Okay this is making so much sense, but how do I actually train my ear to hear all of this?” — I have something for you.
Inside Comme une Française All Inclusive, I go much deeper into these chopped sounds in lessons designed specifically to retrain your ear. Once you are inside, you’ll get a personalized learning itinerary based on your current situation and personal goals, full access to our course library, live sessions with me twice a month, and a community of learners just like you who are finally cracking the code of spoken French.
Click here to learn more: Comme une Française – All Inclusive
Rule 3: Glued words
You know about la liaison – how silent letters get pronounced between words. Well, it’s part of something stronger: French people speak in sound chains. An entire phrase can become one flowing unit with no breaks.
For instance: Il est allée chez elle avec un ami. (= He went to her place with a friend.)
→ In spoken French (in the video!), with the liaison:
- “Il” connects to “est” → il-est
- “Chez” connects to “elle” → chez-elle
- “Un” connects to “ami” → un-ami (you hear an N: “un-nah-mee”)
And the whole thing flows like water.
In English, there’s a tiny gap between words. Your ear can grab onto each one.
In French, words melt into each other. So you might know the word ami — but inside a flowing phrase, it becomes “avecunami” and suddenly it’s unrecognizable.
It’s a problem of flow. And to be honest, the liaison isn’t the main issue here. Actually, the real challenge comes from the rhythm of French language itself.
Rule 4: The Phrase Rhythm
Our final rule for today is something that can change how you hear French forever.
In English, you stress a syllable in every word: PHOtograph, phoTOgraphy, etc. This syllable gets an extra punch, and the others are softened.
In French, though, the stress only falls on the last syllable of a phrase. Most of the sentence flows at the same level – no punching, no emphasis for each word. This is the main reason why you might hear it as a confused, compressed gibberish.
For instance: Je vais au marché avec ma mère. (= I’m going to the market with my mom.)
With the English pattern you’d say it like: Je vais au marché avec ma mère.
Well, what we actually is more like: Jevaisaumarchéavecmamère.
Everything flows evenly until the end, where “mère” gets slightly more weight. It’s one long wave with a punch at the end, not small droplets as in English.
This is why fast French sounds like one blurred sound. Because it kind of IS one sound. The phrase is the unit, not the word. Yes, sometimes a long French sentence gets broken into parts with their own stress at the end – but the main point is:
If your ear is trained to grab individual words, you’ll keep missing them.
Practice
You are not bad at French.
Your ears are fine. Your brain is fine. Your years of study were not wasted.
You were simply trained on one language — written French, textbook French — and now you have to understand a completely different one: spoken French.
It’s like learning to read sheet music and then being asked to sing. The structure is related, but the expression is completely different.
Now let’s train your ear.
Here are some written French sentences. How do you think we pronounce them in everyday spoken French, using the rules we’ve seen today?
- Je ne sais pas où est le téléphone. (= I don’t know where the phone is.)
- Qu’est-ce que tu veux qu’ils apportent ? (= What do you want them to bring?)
- Je ne sais pas ce que tu veux que je te dise. (= I don’t know what you want me to tell you.)
Pronounce them yourself. Then, check if it fits how I pronounce them in the video lesson (and/or the “spoken French” transcription below.)
- a) “Chai pas où est l’téléphone.” → “ne” is gone, “je ne sais pas” becomes “chai pas”, and the “e” in “le” is cut.
- b) Kestu veux qu’izapporte. → Words are glued together! “Qu’est-ce que tu” became “Kesstu”, “ils” becomes “iz” (we cut the consonant and add in the liaison).
- c) “Chai pas c’que tu veux que j’te dise.” → One possible answer!
Your Homework
It can be hard to translate from spoken French to written French – and now you know why. Here’s what I want you to do tonight.
- Pick any French movie — I’ll put some suggestions in the description.
- Put on French subtitles.
- And for just ten minutes, don’t try to understand everything. Instead, watch for these four rules.
- Notice when the “ne” disappears.
- Notice when sounds get chopped — “j’te” instead of “je te.”
- Notice how words glue together — watch the subtitles and listen for where one word ends and another begins.
- Notice the rhythm — listen for the waves.
You’ll start seeing patterns. And that’s when it will click.
Keep in mind: every French person you hear in a movie learned to speak this way by listening, rather than just studying rules and conjugations.
And you can do the same thing, now that you know what to listen for.
Permissions:
You’re allowed to find movies hard at first. Use French subtitles as training wheels. Replay the same scene five times until it clicks, and even if you don’t understand everything — you’re stil learning.
What you’re NOT allowed to do? Believe that you’re “bad at French” just because you can’t understand a movie. You’re not bad at French.
You just weren’t taught the other half of the language. Now you know.
Go watch something tonight, or you can check our membership program: click here to learn more about Comme une Française All Inclusive.
À très vite !