A few recurring traps — false friends, gender guesses, and literal translations — and how to avoid them.
English speakers often assume French nouns follow English gender logic, guess wrong on "false friend" words (like assister, which means to attend, not to help), and translate English phrasal verbs word-for-word where French uses a completely different structure. The fix isn't memorizing exceptions one by one — it's reading and listening enough that the right pattern starts to feel natural before you can explain the rule.