GAME 01
Drift
Clear the sky
Words fall in gently and pick up speed. Type one, press space, watch it burst.
PLAY WITH PURPOSE · Français
French typing games
Make repetition feel lighter. Three short games, all played in French. Every 4 clean hits raises the level, and it never drops back. Scores are kept in this browser; signed in, a new personal best also goes to the leaderboard.
GAME 02
Orbit
Hold the ring
Characters circle the core. Strike each one before its arc runs out.
GAME 03
Signal
Beat the pulse
One word, one shrinking window. Keep the chain alive as the pulse quickens.
Practising French with games
French uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 4 characters beyond a-z — ê, é, è, ù.
French sits on the same QWERTY keys as English, and these practice words then ask for 4 more: ê, é, è and ù. 8% of the practice words here need one — a handful of words — which is often enough that reaching for them should be a trained motion rather than a hunt through a character map.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 64 common French words — 26 distinct characters in all, averaging 3.6 written units per word. All three games pull from it, so the vocabulary you meet while playing is the vocabulary the speed test measures you on. Difficulty rises with every four clean hits and never falls back — a round ends when you stop keeping up, rather than when a timer decides.
French's 64-word bank draws on 26 characters, and they are wildly unequal in how often they turn up — the commonest is about 14% of all letters typed, the rarest a fraction of one. The lessons follow that gradient deliberately, which is why the home row comes first and the awkward reaches come last.
The temptation in French is to skip the accents while drilling and add them later. It does not work — the accent is part of the motion, and a hand that has practised the word without it has practised a different word. Drill them from the start, awkward as the first week is.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 64
- Distinct characters
- 26
- Average word
- 3.6 units
Characters beyond a-z in the French practice words
- ê2
- é1
- è1
- ù1
Counted across the 64 practice words. 8% of them need at least one.
le la de et les des en un une du que quiAZERTY, and the standard that tried to fix it
AZERTY is the French and Belgian layout, and it is genuinely awkward in ways French typists complain about constantly. Digits require the shift key, so typing a number is a two-key operation. Several characters French needs — ù, é, è, à, ç — have their own keys, while others, notably capital accented letters and the œ ligature, were historically difficult or impossible to type at all.
In 2019 AFNOR, the French standards body, published a revised AZERTY addressing most of this, alongside a standardised version of BÉPO — an ergonomic layout designed for French in the way Dvorak was designed for English. Adoption of both has been slow, which will surprise nobody.
The Belgian AZERTY differs from the French one in several positions, so the two are not interchangeable either. Canadian French uses a different arrangement again.
Questions about typing in French
Do I need a French keyboard?
No. The characters beyond a-z in these practice words — ê, é, è and ù — are reachable on the keyboard you already own once the right layout is selected in your operating system's settings. Some layouts give them their own keys, others build them from a modifier; either way the hardware is unchanged.
Which French keyboard layout do these games use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 4 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 64 practice words between them use 26 of those 30, so 4 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
Which game should I start with?
Whichever appeals — they pressure different things. Falling words reward finishing what you started; the orbit rewards picking a target and committing; the shrinking timer rewards not hesitating. If you are trying to fix hesitation specifically, the third one is the unpleasant and effective choice.
Do games help, or are they just a break?
Both, honestly. They will not teach you a key you have never drilled, and they are very good at exposing which keys you only think you know — under time pressure the shaky ones fail first. Treat them as a diagnostic and the lessons as the fix.
Does the difficulty ever stop rising?
There is a ceiling, and almost nobody meets it. In practice a round ends because the pace passed what you can hold rather than because the game ran out of levels — which is the intended shape, since a game that ends on a timer tells you nothing about your typing.
What will I actually be typing in French?
64 of the most common words in French, drawn at random. They use 26 distinct characters between them and average 3.6 written units each, with the longest running to about 8. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is French hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 8% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 4 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in French: lessons and the speed test.
Other languages written in Latin: German, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- How long a typing test should beFifteen seconds, one minute and five minutes measure three different things. Which length to use, and why comparing results across them is meaningless.
- Keyboard shortcuts worth learningThe text-editing shortcuts almost nobody learns are the ones that pay. What they are on each platform, how to learn them, and why they belong to typing.
- The home rowASDF and JKL; are where every touch typist's hands return. What the home row is, why the bumps are there, and how to drill it properly.