Learning The French Weather Phrases

One of the easiest (and most effective) ways to improve your French is to practice speaking it with other people. But often when you’re just starting out, you don’t know enough of the language to hold a conversation.

So with this in mind, we are going to teach you how to talk about the weather in French.

The reason for this is two fold.

Firstly, it’s useful vocab to know. Secondly, talking about the weather is something that’s universal around the entire world (unless you live in a place where the weather never changes, I suppose).

But because of this, you could easily strike up some small talk with a native while you’re on holiday and you’re French will improve because of it.

We recommend the Rocket French online course for beginners who are looking to learn to speak French confidently and naturally, in a very short period of time. To find out more, click here.

Okay, enough introduction. Let’s get started learning about the weather.

The first thing you should know is how to ask what the weather is like. You do this in French by saying “Quel temps fait-il?” This means in English “What’s the weather like?”

The simple answer is to say “It’s nice”. This is simply “Il fait bon”. It’s pronounced kind of like this: eel fay bohn.

Next, if the weather isn’t so nice, you may like to say the weather is bad. This is “Il fait mauvais”. You pronounce “mauvais” like this: moh-vay.

Okay, so you know how to say if the weather is nice or bad… but obviously, there are many more things you can say about the weather.

So let’s learn some of these other things.

If the weather is sunny, you can say “Il fait soleil”… this means “It’s sunny”. Soleil is pronounced like this: “so-lay”.

If it’s snowing, you say this: “Il neige”, which means quite literally, “it’s snowing”.
If it’s raining, say “Il pleut”. It is pronounced like this “pluh”.

Maybe the weather is foggy? If so, you say “Il fait du brouillard”. To pronounce this like a native French speaker, you will say brouillard something like “broo-ee-yar”.

If there is a storm happening, or the weather is generally quite stormy, you will say “Il fait orageux”… it’s pronounced like this: oh-rah-zhuh.

Next, you may like to say the weather is cloudy. To do this, you will say “Il fait nuageux”. The last word is pronuounced “noo-ah-zhuh”.

If it’s cold, you can say “Il fait froid”. Froid is pronounced like this: “fwah”. To say it’s “cool” instead of “cold”, you can use the word “frais”. This is pronounced “fray”.

If you want to say it’s freezing… to be either more expressively, or if the weather literally is freezing, you can say “Il gèle”… this is pronounced totally different to how it looks. It’s “zhell”.

And now on to “hot” (or warm). You will say “Il fait chaud”. It’s pronounced like “shoh”.

One more thing. You may like to say the weather is “beautiful”. Although we rarely use this in English, the French often use beautiful to describe weather… so it’s worth learning. To say this, you will say “Il fait beau”.