French Vocabulary PDF: 692 Beginner Words to Download

By LanguaCards Team

22 August 2026

Here is a free French vocabulary PDF covering 692 A1 words, grouped into twenty topics, with the article on every noun.

It is put together by LanguaCards, a French flashcard app, and the words come from the same curated A1 list the app uses.

A1 is the first level of the Common European Framework, the scale used by most language exams and set out by the Council of Europe. A typical A1 vocabulary runs to 500 or 700 words, so this list covers the level.

What is in the PDF?

Topic	Words
Greetings and politeness	20
Numbers and counting	34
Days, months and time	60
Asking questions	56
Family and people	20
Food and drink	68
Around town	34
Getting around	15
Shopping and money	16
The home	21
Clothes	20
The body and health	36
Feelings	14
Weather and seasons	19
Animals and nature	42
Work and school	39
Describing things	47
Daily routines	30
Common expressions	17
Everyday conversation	84

Every noun carries its article, so you learn le pain rather than pain. That matters more than it looks. French carries gender on every noun permanently, and adding it after a word has already settled in your memory is harder than learning both together from the start.

The problem with vocabulary PDFs

A PDF is a reference, not a study method. You can read a word list twenty times and still not produce the word when a shopkeeper asks you something.

The reason is that recognition and recall are different skills. Reading le fromage and thinking yes, cheese, feels like knowing it. Being asked for the French for cheese with someone waiting is a different task, and the list never trained you for it.

Two things fix this, and neither requires abandoning the PDF.

Test yourself instead of rereading

Cover the English column and work down the French. Then cover the French and work back. Getting it wrong is not wasted time, because the attempt itself is what marks the word as worth keeping.

Come back at spaced out intervals

Forgetting follows a curve. Most of what you learn today is gone within days unless something brings it back. Reviewing a word just before it slips is far more efficient than reviewing everything every week, and it is the difference between a list you read and a list you know.

This is what a word list cannot do on its own. It has no idea which words you are about to forget.

LanguaCards handles that part. The same words sit on cards that come back to you on a schedule, so the ones you keep getting wrong appear more often and the ones you know drift further apart.

How many words a day?

Ten to fifteen is sustainable for most people alongside work.

The limit is not how much you can learn, it is how much you can review. Every new word creates future reviews, so thirty a day feels fine in week one and becomes an unmanageable backlog by week six. The backlog is what makes people stop, not the difficulty.

At ten a day, this PDF takes about ten weeks. If you would rather not count, LanguaCards sets the daily pace for you and keeps the review pile from building up.

What comes after A1?

Level	Vocabulary	What you can do
A1	500 to 700	Introduce yourself, order, ask where things are
A2	1,200 to 1,500	Handle routine exchanges, talk about the past
B1	2,500 to 3,000	Explain opinions, travel comfortably
B2	4,000 to 5,000	Work in French, follow the news
C1	8,000 upward	Read a novel without a dictionary

The difficulty past A1 is rarely finding more words. It is keeping the ones you already met. Most of the time learners lose goes on relearning vocabulary that slipped away weeks earlier.

The same words, with audio

Every word in this PDF is in LanguaCards, where you hear each one spoken rather than guessing the pronunciation from the spelling. French makes that guess unusually unreliable. Silent letters, nasal vowels and liaison mean oiseau sounds nothing like it reads.

Cards also carry an image and a grammar explanation, and reviews bring each word back just before you would have forgotten it, so the list stops being something you read and starts being something you know.

Beyond A1 there are over 6,000 words through to C2, grouped into topic packs, with verb conjugation practice across four tenses. You can filter by level or work across all levels at once.

Free packs are included at no cost, there are no ads on any plan, and the first 24 hours after downloading are fully unlocked.

Get LanguaCards, or download the PDF and start from the list.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I download a free French vocabulary PDF?

This page has one covering 692 A1 words across twenty topics, with the article on every noun so you learn gender alongside meaning. It is free and needs no sign up.

Who made this French vocabulary PDF?

LanguaCards, a French flashcard app covering A1 to C2. The words come from the same curated A1 list the app uses, so every entry has been checked and carries its article.

How many French words do I need at A1?

Around 500 to 700. A1 is the first level of the Common European Framework and covers introducing yourself, ordering, asking where things are and understanding slow, clear speech.

Is a PDF good for learning French vocabulary?

It works as a reference, not as a study method. Reading a list builds recognition but not recall, so pair it with testing yourself and coming back to words at spaced out intervals.

How many French words should I learn a day?

Ten to fifteen is sustainable alongside work. The constraint is review load rather than learning speed. LanguaCards sets the pace for you so the review pile does not build up faster than you can clear it.

How do I hear these French words pronounced?

Every word in this PDF is in LanguaCards with audio, an image and a grammar explanation on the card. French spelling is a poor guide to French sound, so hearing a word matters as much as reading it.

What comes after A1 French vocabulary?

A2 roughly doubles it to 1,200 or 1,500 words, and B1 sits at 2,500 to 3,000. The harder problem past A1 is keeping the words you already met rather than finding new ones.