Here’s some good news if you’re an English speaker learning French: you already know thousands of French words. You just don’t realise it yet.
When William the Conqueror crossed the Channel in 1066, French became the language of the English court, the law, and the ruling class. It stayed that way for roughly three hundred years. English soaked up an enormous amount of French vocabulary during that time, and it never gave it back. Linguists estimate that somewhere between a quarter and a third of all English words come from French. So when you start learning the language, a big chunk of the work is already done.
Let’s look at where those words are hiding, and how to use them to pick up French faster.
Words that are spelled exactly the same
Plenty of French words made the jump into English untouched. The spelling is identical, and the meaning is close enough that you’ll rarely go wrong. Think of restaurant, menu, ballet, bouquet, fiancé, café, garage, machine, village, and silhouette.
The one thing that changes is the pronunciation. A French speaker says restaurant with a soft, nasal ending and no hard “t”, and the stress lands differently than it does in English. The word looks familiar, but you’ll need to retrain your ear and your mouth. That’s actually the easy kind of learning, because you already own the vocabulary. You’re just learning to say it the French way.
Words that changed just a little
Most borrowed words shifted their spelling slightly over the centuries. Once you spot the patterns, you can often guess the French version of an English word, or the English meaning of a French one, without ever having seen it before.
English words ending in -tion are almost always the same in French: nation, information, situation, attention, question. They’re spelled the same and mean the same thing. The catch, again, is the sound. In French that ending is pronounced closer to “see-on”, so nation becomes “nah-see-on”.
A few other reliable patterns:
- English -ty often becomes French -té: liberty and liberté, university and université, society and société.
- English -ly adverbs often become French -ment: generally and généralement, rapidly and rapidement.
- English -ous often becomes French -eux: famous and fameux, dangerous and dangereux.
Once these patterns click, reading French gets a lot less intimidating. You’ll find yourself understanding whole sentences on your first try, simply because so many of the important words rhyme with something you already know.
Watch out for the false friends
There’s one trap worth knowing about early. A handful of words look identical in both languages but mean completely different things. Teachers call them faux amis, or false friends, and they catch out even confident learners.
- Actuellement does not mean “actually”. It means “currently”.
- Librairie is not a library. It’s a bookshop. (A library is a bibliothèque.)
- Sensible means “sensitive”, not “sensible”.
- Attendre means “to wait for”, not “to attend”.
These are rare compared to the words that genuinely match, so don’t let them scare you. Just keep a mental note that a familiar-looking word occasionally has a mind of its own.
How to actually use this
Next time you read a French article on this site, don’t reach for the dictionary straight away. Read a paragraph and underline every word that looks even a little familiar. You’ll be surprised how much you can piece together from the shared vocabulary alone. Then fill in the gaps.
That shared history between English and French is one of your biggest advantages as a learner. Lean on it. You’re not starting from zero. You’re starting from about thirty percent, and you get to build from there.