101 French Phrases You Won't Learn in School

The Key to Sounding Like a Native Speaker: Idioms & Popular Phrases You Don't Learn from Textbooks. Rapidly Increase Your Vocabulary (Beginner--Fluent)

By: Orbis Language Center

Narrated by: Eric LaCord

Length: 1 hr and 59 mins

Publisher's Summary

So you’ve learned the basics in French Class. You know how to say, “Comment allez-vous? or “Où sont les toilettes, s’il vous plaît? or “quel âge avez-vous?” but how do you take it to the next level?

Discover one of the most important yet often one of the most overlooked aspects of a language: idioms and popular phrases in common use. Think about how in English, so much of what we say is full of expressions and figures of speech and idioms. 

We say things like: “dime a dozen,” or “beat around the bush,” “cutting corners,” “speak of the devil,” etc. Plus, there is so much slang and so many phrases in popular use especially with young people: “To have a crush on someone,” “I’m all set,” “I’m down for that,” etc. Plus there are so many slang words we use that have other meanings in popular use like: “cool,” or “sick” or “lame” etc. This is the same if not even more common in the French language. 

If you want to be able to understand people and speak comfortably, you will find it almost impossible without a healthy knowledge of popular idioms, words, and phrases used by native French Speakers.

This book will teach you 101 of the most popular French Idioms and phrases that take you far beyond the basics you may have learned in school.

You will learn:

• The English and French version of the idiom/phrase
• The explanation of how to use this idiom or phrase in common speech and when is an appropriate time to use it
• Examples of casual dialogue in both French and English to show you the context of how this phrase is used
• You can practice repeating each phrase to help commit it to memory and work through the pronunciation

Now you can unlock an entire new level of ability and gain the street-knowledge and confidence you need to have real conversations in French.

©2018 Orbis Language Center (P)2018 Orbis Language Center

French pronunciation embarrassingly and unprofessionally butchered

I don’t know how this was allowed to be published and distributed at such an inadequate level of presentation. There are a lot of errors unfortunately that make it very difficult and painful to listen to. Please use a native speaker. This is really disappointing for a useful resource.

Poor pronunciation

The narrator pronounces most words poorly and some completely wrong. He is not a native speaker and this audio book will not prepare you to sound more like a native while traveling in France.

Content, 10; narration, zed

Idioms are an integral part of any language, so in my Covid Dash related quest to up my French skills, I decided to check into this book. Here’s a good part: this book is filled with idioms that we should all know. Here’s another good part; if you don’t trust the narrator’s pronunciation (and you shouldn’t), you can always look it up online to hear what is correct.
Which leads to the bad part. And the bad part is evident from the very first sentence this guy utters—he is quite possibly the worst French speakers I have ever heard in my life. I had visions of Peter Sellers in the old Pink Panther films. Steve Martin, too.

I tend to not write reviews about books I don’t like because I don’t wanna hurt anybody’s feelings. But honestly, he completely annihilates“bien.” This is one of the first words anyone learns in French, and is correctly pronounced bee-YEN, wth little to no emphasis on the N, kind of as if you pulled that last letter into your nose.

The narrator here completely missed the pronounces it, making it sound like the French word for tickets

Still, I needed a French idiom book, and didn’t find any others on audible. So I purchased this. It has been helpful in reminding me about colloquialisms I need to know. If you decide to buy it, do so for the content, those everyday, casual phrases used by the French. itself. DO NOT rely on this book for accents, that Rolling French ‘r,’ or anything sounding remotely like French Check the pronunciation through a translation site.

oh, but the pronunciation and accent!

Really, the information was good and the selected phrases are useful but the speaker's delivery was terrible. Oh my goodness! What happened? The accent and pronunciation couldn't even pass for a D-grade in an American french language classroom. Most of the basic words like "par", "pour", "veux" et. were horribly mispronounced. It was like the narrator purposely tried to not use anything even identifiable as proper french pronunciation of the words. If the mispronounciation and bad accent were intentional, this should be explained in the intro otherwise it seems like you only learned the language from reading and never actually listened to the rhythm, intonation or pronunciation of french words and phrases. It's like learning English without ever hearing it spoken. One might pronounce "knock" "k-no-c-k". Because how else would you know? This recording does a huge disservice to listening learners. I live in France. The whole point is to be able to use these phrases in a way that can be understood and makes sense when spoken to a native -- not perfection, but much better than this at least. Go listen to native french people speak on youtube for about 12 hours then do this audiobook over. You can do better. Afterwards, I would appreciate a free upgrade of my paid purchase. I can't bear to hear the original again.

I learned a lot!

Great, Merci Beaucoup ^^! I especially like number 18. The French parts are slow enough for me to understand them well.

Awful accent. Very suspicious reviews.

The audiobook has some useful phrases but I had to refund the item because I couldn't stand the accent of the narrator, it doesn't sound like any native French accent I've ever heard and was so distracting I couldn't manage to get through the book, let alone listen to it multiple times in order to learn it. Having clicked on the reviewers profiles for both this audiobook and the authors other audiobooks, almost all the reviewers are using cut and paste reviews, and all their reviews are 5 stars for everything they review. Paid reviews on Audible are a big problem and this looks extremely suspicious.

Absolutely horrific pronunciation

The content is fairly basic and certainly things that you WOULD learn in school! Pronunciation horrible.