DELF A1 Vocabulary List (Beginner French)

DELF A1 is the first of the diplomas awarded by France Éducation international for the French Ministry of Education. It covers the survival core of French: introducing yourself, giving your address and nationality, asking simple questions, numbers, dates and the immediate present with être, avoir, aller and faire.

For candidates preparing DELF A1. Maps to CEFR A1.

About DELF A1

DELF A1 is the first of the diplomas awarded by France Éducation international for the French Ministry of Education. It covers the survival core of French: introducing yourself, giving your address and nationality, asking simple questions, numbers, dates and the immediate present with être, avoir, aller and faire. Each DELF is an independent diploma rather than a stage in a course, and none of them expire.

Who this list is for

DELF A1 suits learners in the first months of French, and it is a common first step for people who have moved to France or to a French-speaking country and need the language around them daily. It is rarely required in itself; the levels that carry administrative weight begin higher. Take it for the deadline and the structure it imposes.

How to study

Learn nouns with their article, le problème and la main, because French gender is not deducible often enough to guess and is expensive to relearn. Spend early effort on pronunciation and listening rather than on reading, since written French and spoken French diverge more than most learners expect and A1 listening is where candidates lose marks. The A1 list is small enough to finish, so spaced repetition here is about retention rather than selection.

The list (496 words)

Some example sentences come from the Tatoeba Project (tatoeba.org), CC BY 2.0 FR. The rest were written for MindDory. Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR.

Where do the words after this list come from?

A list has an end. The words you keep for good usually turn up somewhere else — in a page you read, a show you watched, or a conversation you had — one at a time, and rarely at the level you planned for.

MindDory connects to Claude, Cursor, and other assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol, so a word you meet while you are chatting is saved to your deck as a flashcard without you leaving the conversation. There is no copy and paste, no CSV export, and no browser extension.

How the assistant connection works

Choosing an app