Intro: Welcome to the French Made Easy podcast, where I give you all the basics you need to speak French clearly and confidently. I'm your host, Mathilde, and I'm a French teacher, mumpreneur, and bread and cheese lover. Join me as I dive into all things French for beginners, and deliver to you bite-sized and easy-to-follow lessons every Tuesday. Let's get started, "on commence"!

Bonjour à tous! 🧡

Welcome back to the French Made Easy Podcast. This is episode number 89, numéro 89!

This episode is part II of our lesson on How to Ask For & Give Directions in French. So if you haven't listened to part I yet, then listen to episode number 88 first.

Ok, so today you're going to learn a few useful and simple French expressions to give directions. These are beginner expressions so very basic but also very useful.

If you're new here, make sure you have your lesson's cheat sheet in front of you so you can see the words while listening to the lesson. The download link is in the episode notes on the podcast platform you're listening to. After the lesson, head over to the French Made Easy library to download your lesson's exercises. It's free.

So, we take the scenario where a stranger is asking us for directions in the street. We don't know that person, so we're going to use the subject pronoun, "vous."

But because we're are giving directions, or instructions, we're are going to use the imperative mood. 

Now, don't panic, this is not turning into a conjugation episode, and we're not going to learn the imperative today, but I still want you to understand how the expressions that we are learning today are made. There's no point in teaching you phrases if you don't fully understand how they're made. 

So what you've got to know for now is that, in the few expressions that you're about to learn, we're going to drop the subject pronoun "vous", but we're going to keep the conjugated verb.

It will make more sense in a second when I give you our first expression.

Ok, so our first expression is: 

• Continuez tout droit. (Word for word: Continue / Go straight ahead.)

So just to go back quickly to the subject pronoun, instead of saying "Vous continuez tout droit." (You keep...) I dropped the "vous" and say "Continuez tout droit." (Keep...)

• Tournez à gauche. (Turn left.)
• Tournez à droite. (Turn right.)

Little pronunciation note: there's a difference between "tout droit" in our first expression, where the final "t" is silent, and "à droite" where you hear the "t" : "tout droit" / "à droite."

• Prenez la première (rue) à gauche. (Take the first street on your left / Take the first left.) The word "rue" which means "street", is implied. / Prenez la première (rue) à droite. (Take the first street on your right / Take the first right.)
• Prenez la deuxième (rue) à gauche (Take the second left.) / Prenez la deuxième (rue) à droite. (Take the second right.)
• Traversez la rue. (Cross the street.)
• Go past the cinema. (Go past the cinema.)
• La gare est sur votre gauche / droite. (The train station is on your left / It's on your right.)
• La gare est au bout de la rue. (The train station is at the end of the street.)

Et voilà! That's it! Now you've got a few simple expressions to give directions to someone in French. And that's now the end of today's episode; I hope you enjoyed it! I'll chat with you in the next episode.

Merci beaucoup, et à bientôt. 💋