French · learn by reading
Learn French from texts you want to finish.
taihaa is a reading loop for French. Bring an article, a story, or a class text. Tap a word for an English translation, save the useful ones with the sentence still attached, and review them later.
Je reste jusqu'à midi.
I am staying until noon. jusqu' is the short form of jusque. The words you tap next to it are à and midi.
Je
I
reste
stay
jusqu'
short form of jusque
à
to
midi
noon
Reading, then a small review queue
Bring a text you can finish
A news paragraph, a class handout, a short story, or an EPUB chapter. A starter from the library works too. taihaa does not open on a stack of unrelated example sentences.
Tap the word after the apostrophe
In qu'il, jusqu'à, and lorsqu'il, the reader separates the short form so il or à can match a dictionary headword. aujourd'hui and rendez-vous stay one word, because that is the word you met.
Review the sentence
Saved words come back with the line they came from. Again, Learning, Known, and Easy set a simple spaced schedule. Ignore drops a word from review.
What French reading needs from a reader
A word list can introduce vocabulary. It cannot show you how jusqu'à sits in a sentence you already care about. taihaa keeps the practice attached to a text: the reader for the first meeting, the saved sentence for the next ones.
Elision is a reading detail, not a lesson
qu', jusqu', lorsqu', puisqu', and quoiqu' are split so the following word can be looked up. A single letter such as l' or c' already worked that way. You still read the sentence as French. There is no chart of every contracted form.
Some apostrophes are the word
aujourd'hui, quelqu'un, and presqu'île are dictionary words. They stay together. Hyphenated words such as rendez-vous stay together too.
No conjugation table
reste and restait are different shapes of a verb. taihaa does not turn the reader into a grammar chart. If a form has its own dictionary line, you will see a translation. If it does not, type the one that fits this sentence.
Level tags are estimates
Lessons can show an automatic CEFR tag. It helps you pick a text. It is not an exam result, and a short passage can be tagged with low confidence.
A practical first session
- Register and set the target language to French.
- Open a sample lesson, a library starter, or paste a short paragraph you already wanted to read.
- Read one page. Save three to eight words, and edit any translation that does not fit the sentence.
- Come back for review. The card should still show the sentence from that page.
URL import works best on public articles. If a page is paywalled or mostly scripts, paste the text instead. English is the base language for meanings.
Start with one French text.
You do not need a full course loaded in advance. One article is enough to see whether reading-first practice fits how you study.