French Youtubers

badgerssong:

languageoficeandfire:

Hello there! 

I see many posts around Tumblr where people list or ask for lists of French Youtubers whose videos may help them in improving their understanding and pronunciation of the language.

However, I feel like the same names keep coming back again and again and again. As a Frenchman, I want to offer you French-studying people the opportunity to go beyond the usual NormanFaitDesVideos.

Don’t be mistaken, his videos are good material for non-native speakers but he’s not the only one out there. Plus, though he remains widely popular, the craze around him has sort of died down in the recent years.

Here are the French Youtubers I follow more or less regularly:

• Cyprien, a friend of Norman who has the same themes and humour.
• Mister V, in the same vein as Cyprien and Norman but slightly crazier.
• HugoToutSeul, Norman’s comrade with whom he started making videos on the Internet.
• Le Joueur du Grenier, a humoristic channel about old video games and the kids’ culture of the 1980s and early 1990s. He opened a new channel, Bazar du Grenier, which is also dedicated to video games. I personally like his work because it sheds light on how cartoons and our visions of American cartoons, Japanese animes and French animation movie changed in the recent decades. It might all seem nuts and silly to you in the beginning but it’s a real eye-opener regarding the kids’ culture from 20/30 years ago.
• LinksTheSun, a friend of Grenier from above. His channel theme revolves around music and French cultural landmarks. You’ll be really up-to-date thanks to his videos analysing and criticising popular French songs at the moment. His fast pace when speaking may be prove to be a hardship at first. Some people don’t like him for being brash and opinionated. See for yourself. 
• Durendal1 is a channel purely dedicated to film critiques. It is a good way for non-native to become familiar with more French-speaking movies that don’t get much publicity outside of the Hexagone. 
• Le Fossoyeur de Films, another movie-centred channel and a friend of Durendal. His tone and approach is very different from that of his predecessor and might bring an interesting balance to the sometime over-analytical Durendal. They did some videos together as well. 
• Karim Debbache is no longer active but is a gold mine for cultural criticism of American movies and video games from a French perspective.
• E-penser is a channel where you will find science-oriented videos. The content is amazing in that it makes complex scientific theories and works easily understandable by everyone, even if you are not too keen on this kind of subjects. It is always very well written and funny. 
• Usul2000 is probably the Frenchest channels of this lists. Usul tackles in a brainy fashion video games, movies and portraits of popular French people. It will probably be very helpful in understanding elements of French culture. 
• Last but not least, Le Petit Journal. It is not Youtube-based but is the closest thing that France has of The Daily Show. It is very informative, sarcastic but at the same time, the journalists from this programme do great work at deciphering and making fun at the politicians. It is left-wing leaning but manage to be critical of the entire political spectrum of the country. They are quite influential.

I was also about to make a French Youtuber List other than about comedians (such as Norman or Cyprien once again). Most of them are trying to offer a format different from the podcast.

• Linguisticae is a channel on French language and language studies. Really interesting and funny. He offers several format, more or less short (~6-8mins).
• Tyllou offers musical analyses of film (and sometimes video game) soundtrack (~10min videos). I sincerely encourage you to have a look at his series on the LotR Soundtrack (~20mins for each video). He’s doing an amazing job. He also offers some rather cool remixes. I sincerely recommend him.
• Fabien Campaner is, as Fossoyeur de Film and Durendal1, interested in movies. Albeit in a different style, his humour is always worth a watch. However, he’s more well-known for his format ‘On va faire Cours’ which aims to offer an analysis of the historical clichés found in the cinematographic genre. Absolutely a worth a watch too! 🙂
• DirtyBiology is, much like e-penser, a science-oriented channel, with a large preference for biology [*coughs* obviously *coughs*]. Often lasting around 12mins, his videos are really enjoyable and well-informed as biology is actually what he studied. He also offers some videos with a more sociological/anthropological tones. I recommend his video ‘le Deuil Numérique’ which is quite poignant.
• pvnova is a channel offering quite short video anylises (~5mins) of the different musical styles. If you want to know a bit more about ‘la musique franchouillarde’, just click on the link.
• Studio Vrac is a channel in the same spirit than Good Mythical Morning. Entertaining, funny and well-realised, it’s a very nice formula if you just want to have fun, relax and learn some French slang and familiar phrases for a while – watching those two French-speaking dudes might indeed be what you’re looking for.

Also, to add on e-penser, there is subtitles in English for many of his videos! 😀