How to learn French with Le Petit Prince

Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) is a 1943 novella written and illustrated by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is narrated by an aircraft pilot who encounters a boy in the Sahara Desert known as 'The Little Prince', who then regales the narrator with stories of his journeys across the stars, and all the colourful characters he has encountered in his travels.

With its themes of loneliness, friendship and homesickness, it’s easy to see why it’s one of the most beloved books in the world, having sold 140 million copies to date, as well as translated into more than 500 languages.

That said, it’s simple enough to read in the original French if your reading skills are strong enough - and doing so is a great way to improve your French.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French aviator and writer. He was born in 1900 to an aristocratic family in Lyon, and was a child of many talents. After dropping out of the École des Beaux-Arts (link to Garnier blog), where he studied architecture, he began military service and became a pilot. His experiences with aviation would directly inform the story of Le Petit Prince, whose narrator is an aviator like Saint-Exupéry himself. Aviation would also be the subject of his first book, L'Aviateur (The Aviator), published in 1926, about the life and adventures of the eponymous pilot.

After France's armistice with Germany and the installation of the Vichy Regime, Saint-Exupéry fled to North America. He began work on a children's book to calm his nerves during this turbulent time, and the result was Le Petit Prince, published in both English and French editions in New York 1943.

Unfortunately, Saint-Exupéry didn't live long enough to enjoy the eventual success of his book. In 1944, a year later, he went missing during a piloting mission over the Mediterranean, and was never seen again. It was the author's death, however, and the overlap of these circumstances with the subject matter of the novella, that turned Le Petit Prince and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry into household names.

Considered one of the most accessible classics of French literature, Le Petit Prince isn't just a great novella, it's also a hugely useful resource for learning French. As a children's book, the vocabulary is not too difficult and the sentences are not too long. But adults can - and do - get plenty of enjoyment from the novella too.

Read along videos

Watch Alexa’s Petit Prince videos on YouTube, in which she reads through the novella in French at a steady pace. It’s a great way to attune your ear to the pronunciation of the words, and the combination of listening and reading will help cement the text in your mind.

The series is divided into multiple videos, each covering a few chapters from the novella.

Mark down words you’re unfamiliar with

While reading the text, underline (or highlight if you’re reading the ebook version) any words you don’t understand. You can then write the translation above or to the side or (if you really want to test your memory, don't write down the translation at all). Whichever way you do it, make sure to revisit each page after an interval of time and check in on the words you've highlighted. You can double underline any you still don’t remember, and focus on these words when it comes to revisiting the page again.

This is a great way to build up a vocabulary list while strengthening your reading skills.

Read the parallel text edition

You may notice while shopping for Le Petit Prince that there are some editions which are over 100 pages, even though it’s just a short book. That’s because you’re probably looking at the bilingual edition. This edition features the French text on the left page and the English text on the right, meaning you can quickly check the translation of any part of the text you don't understand. It's a great way to read in French without having to look up every second word and losing your rhythm. It also removes the need to mark down any words with which you're unfamiliar, though it may still be worth underlining them so that you know which words to revise.

Read it in English first

If you don’t want to be juggling the French and English versions of the text, you can always just read the English version first (or whichever language you’re most comfortable reading in). Doing so will be helpful for when it comes to reading the text in French, as you’ll be able to call on memory to remember certain words and supply narrative context where needed.

Reading any book in French can be a challenge if you’re not a native speaker. But some books are definitely easier than others, and Le Petit Prince is widely regarded as one of the most accessible for French learners. Not only is it short, but the language is simple, and the author’s illustrations provide helpful context for when you can’t quite figure out the meaning of a sentence.

Of course, the book isn't so simple that you won’t learn anything from reading it. Some aspects, such as the use of the passé simple, or even the sheer bizarreness of some of the Little Prince's adventures, can be challenging. If you take your time with it, however, and make a note of new vocabulary and grammar points, you'll quickly get the hang of it.

Reported speech conventions

Reported speech works differently in French from how it does in English. For instance, take a look at the following passage from chapter 7:

«Je connais une planète où il y a un monsieur cramoisi. Il n'a jamais respiré une fleur. Il n'a jamais regardé une étoile. Il n'a jamais aimé personne. Il n'a jamais rien fait d'autre que des additions. Et la journée il répète comme toi: "Je suis un homme sérieux ! Je suis un homme sérieux !", et ça le fait gonfler d'orgueil. Mais ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un champignon !
— Un quoi ?
— Un champignon !»

You'll notice how different the punctuation is from English here. First of all, French uses guillemets to denote reported speech, unlike the inverted commas we use in English (although it does use these, as you can see above, for speech within speech).

Secondly, one set of guillemets can enclose speech from more than one speakers. There are two interlocutors in this conversation, but the guillemets don't close until the first speaker has responded to the second's interjection. Instead, each new speaker is introduced with an em dash.

On that note, if you want to use an expression like 'he said' ('il disait'), you don't need to break off the guillemets to show that this is not part of the speech, as in the following example:

«S'ils voyagent un jour, me disait-il, ça pourra leur servir.[»]

Passé simple

The passé simple is rarely, if ever, used in conversation, so it's likely to be the tense you're least familiar with. In the Complete French Course it isn't covered until Lesson 37. It's mainly used for literary works.

You can see the full conjugation table for this tense here.

Vocabulary

Le Petit Prince employs a diverse vocabulary for such a small book, and it's likely that you won't have encountered many of the words in the novella, even if you're proficient in French. That's because the story is largely fantastical, and during the Prince's travels he encounters 'baobabs' (a species of tree), 'un vaniteux' (a vain man), 'chenilles' and 'papillons' (caterpillars and butterflies) and much more.

An important keystone of French literature

Le Petit Prince is considered one of the most famous classics of literature, and it has a central place in the pantheon of French culture. As we've written elsewhere (link to blog), to properly immerse yourself in the French language it helps to get acquainted with the culture, and so reading Le Petit Prince is a fantastic way to familiarise yourself with a common reference point for French speakers.