Want to speak French better?
It’s often the final stumbling block for people learning French online. They can be quizzed on the correct conjugation of aller every day for weeks. They might have long ago memorized the difference between du pain and de l’eau. Maybe, after several months (or years) of online study, they’re pretty good at reading written French.
But then you arrive in Paris, and everyone’s speaking 100 miles/kilometers a minute, and it feels like you haven’t learned a single (useful) thing. You know French — but it might suddenly feel like you have no idea how to speak it.
That’s where Yabla comes in, with an impossible-to-beat tool: Yabla Speak.
Speak French Better With Yabla Speak
Yabla Speak is a doozy.
It’s not necessarily hard to speak French. It is monumentally hard, for many native speakers of other languages, to speak French well. There’s the R sound, which you’ll need to master before losing your keys — since that will necessitate a call to the serrurerie. There’s the difference between un and une, which might be bigger than your French teacher suggested. There’s mastering words like écureuil, which, for many anglophones, are just … a mess.
With Yabla Speak, you’ll watch fun, informative videos — and then repeat what you’ve just heard.
If that sounds too easy, it’s not. Yabla Speak is smart enough that it can distinguish between mumbly, halfhearted French and precise, emphatic French pronunciation. It won’t let you move forward until you get close to the second one.
Take this video — Daniel Benchimol tour of St-Jean-de-Luz, in the Basque country of southwest France:
You’ll listen to Daniel as he takes us on a tour of St-Jean-de-Luz. And every sentence or so, you’ll be asked to repeat what he’s just said.
It’s harder than it looks (in a good way) because the software is trained to require a “French accent.” Mumbling through with your normal anglophone accent won’t work — you really need to go for it, in ways that might feel silly. In so many ways, this is the hardest part of speaking a language well. What feels slightly ridiculous at first can actually be the difference between being understood and not being understood by native speakers. What feels slightly ridiculous likely is, in fact, better pronunciation.
Yabla helps you get over that first step — to achieve what we’ve called “Shameless Speaking” — so that what feels weird will quickly begin to feel right. Try it! Yabla lets you listen to each soundtrack as many times you need to, so you can repeat and refine ’til you get it right. No other tool allows for that level of precision — and improvement.
There’s actually a big difference between un and une. Yabla Speak will make you repeat each one until you get it right. And TBH it’s really nice to do all that in the privacy of your own space — versus in front of an entire boulangerie of people, including a cashier who can’t understand your tradition from your “tradition.” There’s no doubt that spending some time with Yabla Speak will make your next trip to Paris (or Montréal, or French Polynesia, or Morocco) that much better.
If you want to speak French like a native, there’s no better way than listening to a native speaker — and then refining your accent with Yabla Speak.
Also, it’s super fun. Try it free for 15 days!