10 French Mistakes Guaranteed to Drive Your Teacher Up the Wall (And How to Fix Them for Good)

You can conjugate the subjunctive in your sleep, you know the difference between imparfait and passé composé, and you still manage, every single time, to make a French person's eyebrow twitch. Don't worry, it's not really about grammar. It's about ten tiny, sneaky habits that give you away the second you open your mouth — and that I hear, week after week, from students who are otherwise doing brilliantly. Here are four of my favourites to get you started, plus a peek at the other six that you can access in my free guide here.

Countdown time

I've been teaching French for years now, in different settings, and these days mostly as a private tutor for expats settling into their new life here, and at some point I started keeping a mental list. Not of my students' failures — genuinely, most of these mistakes are made by people with excellent grammar — but of the little reflexes that betray an English-speaking brain working in the background. I eventually turned it into a full countdown, because nothing motivates a French learner quite like finding out where their favourite blunder ranks.

"Ce week-end, je vais visiter ma grand-mère" 😆

❌ I understand the temptation, but your grandmother is not a museum. In French, visiter is reserved for tourism: you visit Paris, you visit Japan, you visit a château, you visit an exhibition. You never, under any circumstances, visit a person (well, the only circumstance would be you are in the Magic School Bus and actually visit the inside of someone...).

✔️ For people, you reach for voir instead : "ce week-end, je vais voir ma grand-mère" is all it takes. And the two verbs can live happily in the same sentence: "cet été, je suis allée voir ma famille aux États-Unis, et j'ai visité New York." One sentence, two verbs, zero confusion, and your grandmother stops sounding like a tourist attraction.

👉 You may also come accross "rendre visite" - although it does exist and is perfectly correct, it is more a school-book expression and not really used in actual daily French.)

"Bonne journée ! — À vous !" 🙊

❌ Picture the scene: you're leaving the bakery, baguette under your arm, and the baker sends you off with a warm "bonne journée !" You answer, proudly, "à vous !" — and get a small, polite, slightly confused smile in return. Here's the thing: "à vous" isn't wrong exactly, it's just incomplete (and therefore, sounds very awkard).

✔️The full phrase you're reaching for is "bonne journée à vous aussi" — and when French speakers shorten it, they cut it down to "vous aussi," not to "à vous." It's such a small swap, but it's the difference between sounding like someone who learned French in a classroom and someone who lives it.

"Je suis chaud, je suis faim, je suis froid, etc." 🙃

❌ This is the classic trap of mis-translating word for word, and I get why — in English, you are hot, hungry, or cold. French draws a sharper line than English does. Être is more for permanent states: your character, your personality, your mood — "moi, par exemple, je suis petite, je suis française, je suis patiente."

✔️ Temporary physical sensations, though, go with avoir plus a noun rather than an adjective: "j'ai faim," "j'ai froid," "j'ai chaud."

👉 Watch out, the two aren't interchangeable! "J'ai froid" just means you're cold right now, while "je suis froid" describes you as a cold, distant person by nature. As for "je suis chaud" — let's just say it comes across as bold, and not in the way you meant it...

"De le" and "de les" 😱

❌ And here's the one that might as well come with a flashing neon sign over your head reading "French student." No native French speaker, ever, in any register, in any region, in any mood, says "de le" or "de les." NEVER. French does tolerate plenty of regional quirks and casual shortcuts that purists might call "errors" but that are really just variation. This isn't one of them. "De le" and "de les" don't exist, full stop.

✔️They contract, always, into du and des. If there's one habit worth drilling until it's automatic, it's this one.

And six more where that came from

Those are four of my favourites, but the full countdown has ten, and some of the ones I haven't told you about yet are even sneakier: the adjective you should never say "très" in front of (even though it feels so natural), the two little letters that silently reveal whether you've been binge-watching French pronunciation or actually listening, the word for "well" that half my students get wrong in their very first week, and a couple more that I promise will make you wince in recognition. Download the full "10 French Mistakes" guide here.

Why these mistakes happen?

Most of these errors come from direct translation — thinking in English and converting word by word. But French has its own fixed expressions, plural forms, and rhythms. Languages evolve, even when they share a common history... and translating directly is not often a good idea!

How to fix them — and sound natural

• Listen: Spend time hearing native French in real contexts (radio, series, podcasts).

• Repeat: Shadow native speakers — copy their intonation, not just their words.

• Practice with feedback: An app can’t tell you your “Et vous !” sounds weird — but I can 😉

• Get the full countdown! I've put all ten mistakes, with the full explanations and examples, into a free guide you can keep and come back to whenever you need a refresher. If you recognised yourself in even one of the four above, the other six are worth seeing too.

  Download the full "10 French Mistakes" guide here — and if you'd rather work through your own personal list of "annoying habits" with someone who'll catch them in real time (kindly, I promise), get in touch. I'd love to help you cross every single one of them off your list.

Want to master real-life French as an expat-to-be?

Join my online group or my private lessons, designed for English speakers who want to feel at home in French. ✉️ Contact me: contact@clemenceparis.fr

Clémence PARIS

Langue et communication

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