July's word: Il faut

If you've been learning French for any length of time, you've almost certainly come across it before. You probably learnt that it means "it's necessary" or "you have to" and then moved on to the next chapter.

But il faut deserves much better than that.

It's one of those expressions that quietly appears everywhere in everyday French. Once you start listening out for it, you'll hear it on the radio, in conversations, on television, in podcasts and in the sort of everyday situations that French people barely even notice.

Il faut réserver.

Il faut profiter du beau temps.

Il faut faire attention.

Il faut partir.

It's everywhere.

One of the things I enjoy most about teaching adults is watching a familiar expression suddenly become useful in dozens of different situations. It's a lovely reminder that learning French isn't always about adding more and more vocabulary.

 Often it's more interesting to look at making far better use of the words you already know.

That's become one of the guiding ideas behind our Word of the Month.

Rather than racing through long vocabulary lists, we slow down.

We ask questions:

How many situations could this phrase help me in?

What other expressions does it connect to?

How do French people really use it?

How often do I hear it?

The answers are usually much more interesting than people expect.

Take il faut.

It's beautifully simple from a grammar point of view. Once you've learnt the structure, all you do is add an infinitive.

Il faut partir.

Il faut attendre.

Il faut réserver.

Il faut appeler.

No complicated endings to remember. No decisions about which subject pronoun to use. Just one reliable structure that you can use over and over again.

Perhaps that's why French people rely on it so much.

It also says something rather interesting about French communication.

When English speakers give advice, we often feel the need to soften it.

"You might want to..."

"Perhaps you should..."

"It would probably be a good idea to..."

French often reaches naturally for il faut instead.

It's direct without sounding bossy.

Helpful without feeling overly polite.

Once you begin using it yourself, you start sounding a little more French because you're borrowing not just the words but the way French speakers organise their thoughts.

That's what interests me most.

Language isn't simply vocabulary and grammar.

It's also a way of seeing the world.

Throughout July we'll be exploring il faut from lots of different angles.

We'll use it around the house.

We'll use it for holidays and summer.

We'll use it to give advice.

We'll use it to notice French rhythm and intonation in Voice Mastery.

And, as always, we'll see just how far one small expression can take us.

Because after all these years, I've become convinced of something.

French becomes much easier when you stop asking, "What's today's new phrase?"

Instead, ask yourself:

"How much more can I do with the phrase I already know?"

More often than not, the answer is far more than you imagined.

That's exactly why il faut is July's Word of the Month.