How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
- The only language you need is English. Let me teach you how to read French words without already knowing any French. Watch and I'll explain.
MASSIVE FRANCOPHOBE? You should watch anyway, because the reasons why these tricks work raise some fascinating facts about the history of the English language.
By inserting an extra S here or there, some French words magically become much more like their English equivalents (or "cognates"). Also, the clever deployment of a W can render even the most Gallic of words easily recognisable.
DISCLAIMER The tricks don't work every time... but when they do, it is enormously satisfying.
==CONTENTS==
0:00 Intro
0:59 TRICK 1: Swapping É for S
3:50 Why TRICK 1 works
4:58 TRICK 2: Letters with hats
7:43 Why TRICK 2 works
8:17 TRICK 3: Swapping GU for W
8:57 Why TRICK 3 works
10:53 Translating a sentence
11:52 Goodbye 
Развлечения
There is one more trick also explained by the norman language: if a word starts with "ch" then try to drop the h letter after the c letter . For example with "chat" you get cat, with "char" you get car, with "chaudron" you get caudron (cauldron) and with "château" you get "casteau" (castle).
Yes - this is a good rule of thumb - but is "char" a word? Maybe "chariot"? :) I know the others, and can add "chapeau" - cap (or hat) :)
As a rule of thumb you can add the rule that -eau or -au can be replaced by al . In french the L sound was only pronounced at the end of a word, when it was in plural there was still a letter and so it became a voyel, a bit like nowadays in Brazilian Portugese. If you listen they don't say Brazil but something more like Braziu. Look your two examples:
caudron => cauldron, casteau => casteal and here some other examples: faux => falx (false), autre => altre (latin alter),
@@LaurelsLearningLab Yes char is a french word. One meaning is an ancient horse-drawn two-wheeled vehicle. The other meaning (more common) is tank (armored military vehicle). Both words char and tank can be used. Actually "char" in french canadian means car which is very different from the european french word "voiture".
@@sebastiendine4834 yes I recognize chariot but wasn't familiar with char. Thanks 🙏
Hi I’m French ! I’d like to add that in old French « Château » was « Castel » and then castle in English.
As a French speaker this video was just as fascinating.
I have to admit, I never considered the similarities between such words as Guêpe and Wasp, Guerre and War, Gardien and Warden...
That third trick was mind-blowing!
There's a French guy who wrote a book about this. He says that over 200000 English words come from French. He mentions particularly government language as the rulers of England all spoke and wrote in French.
@@madelainepetrin1430 A lot of Russian comes from French (and more lately, English). For example, think of all the words ending in 'tion' (machination, invention, revolution inter alia). Russian takes these words, changes the stress to the middle syllable and replacing 'tion' with 'see-a' (phonetic sound).
Suddenly you have machinITsia, inventsia, revolUTsia.
All hidden behind the Cyrillic alphabet which makes it look hard.
Congratulations, you now know hundreds of Russian words.
@@68404 Wooooah I've always wanted to learn Russian and I already speak and understand French and English.
Are you telling me it's doable?!?!
@@68404 Thanks for the tip, I'm gonna try this ;)
@@68404 Merci beaucoup! See 'ya.
I am a native French speaker and to be honest, this helps me improve my English too, as I can relate some words back to their French form and understand instantly what they mean. Tempest and Haste for example, but also Fest (fête = party) and to Spare (épargner = to spare their life). Thanks, it is amazing and you look like my little brother 😊
Yes - forest and hospital also add the s in English 😏 I teach French to Americans and English to French people and it is easy to make these comparisons. 👍
Attention, in german language : das Fest = the party ; sparen = to spare; die Wespe = the wasp !
@@LaurelsLearningLabinterest too😊
I appreciate that because I used to teach this when teaching English in France. 🙂
@@Amia67360German is full of words very similar to English
These are obvious but I’m saying it still “because why not” : In French, there is a group of adjectives that are end with -eux.
As in English, we change the -eux to -ous and we mostly got the same word in English(doesn’t work for always)
Example: Anxieux is anxious
Sérieux is serious ( without the accent, but very close )
Curieux is curious
Dangereux is dangerous
2nd trick is not always works, but really good to know. So many words in French that ends with -ie,-té,-é etc. we can change it into -y, and we will got an English word(or similar).
Example: Envie is envy
Joie is joy
Électricité is electricity
Catégorie is category
Épicé is Spicy
Etc.
3: I realise that sometimes when a French word ends with “aire”, in English would probably be “ary” or “ar”
Dictionnaire is dictionary
Nécessaire is necessary
Similaire is similar
Salaire is salary
Etc.
In fact, there are much much more tricks because French influenced English language a lot for 300 years. Apparently, English had changed a lot compare to centuries before, and French words in English would have change their spelling and meaning(sometimes) so we need tricks to change back the real original word for translating. But we can see French really influenced a lot so the connection between English and French is still there over centuries.
Thank you!!! Needed this🎉
Thanks
Those are obvious though, pretty sure everyone can guess those unlike most of what was said in the video.
These are obvious. You don't need any tricks to recognize these words.
Thanks, so interesting.
Needs more of that disapproving French woman
I agree. It was fun to see her pop in the video. I always felt indifferent about the french language but back in the 2011 Pan Am, the single season show on NBC set in the 1960s, I was hypnotized by the voice of the beautiful Canadian actress Karine Vanasse who played Colette. I recently watched it again over the summer while stuck at home. It was a good anachronistic drama if you like that.
@ Steve Gardner Hey, that's not very nice!! 😕
(FUNNY!😄, but not very nice!)😏
She is charming, tho'! 🤠👍
D’accor!!!!
@@ediewall6360
D'accorD!!!
@@nickf3242 You were under her feminine mystique spell. LOL
Damn. I've been studying French for 25 years and never knew this. Well done man. Guell done.
Seriously?
dude the circonflex rule is the first thing you learn in school when you chose to learn French.
Many words become recognizeable as either English or German words if you apply that rule.
Obviously won't work with words like well which aren't from French origin.
@@TremereTT Maybe he is not English so this rule was not important from his point of view
@@feketegabor3319 I assume one learns English before one learns French.
I 've studied both languages and know the similarities of many words because of their French origin. But, no one has put this in such an entertaining way. Thank you.
Very, very true!
I have some things to say:
1- You pronounce "forêt" and "écureuil" right
2- to say side we use the word "côté", "côte" can be side but is mostly used as coast
3- You made my day with this video, it is fun to see how english people are trying to understand the overcomplicated french language 😂.
2 - Yes, absolutely, like "Côte d'Azur" or "Côte d'Armor"
I thought it meant coast too!
There's a place near me called Hen Cote, which confused me for ages as I always thought it meant exclusively coast, and we're 70 miles from the nearest beach. Chickens don't surf! Or so I thought.
I found it had several meanings, either at different times or with different accents. I presume the meaning here is/was hill or side of hill, as it is an area just outside town with a hill and an old farm house sits on top.
I'm French. First year of junior high, I was in a class in which we started learning English and German. Both languages were new to us, so every word was a discovery. Yet we quickly noticed that some words looked alike (for example certain weekdays: "Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday" vs "Montag, Freitag, Samstag, Sonntag"). When mentioned to our (really bad) teacher, she forbid us to compare both languages and ever talk about it (she was a bit jealous, because let's face it we had much a preference for English which seemed easier to grasp).
Now, as an adult speaking a few languages and armed with more knowledge of Europe's history, I am amazed how backward it is to teach a language as if it had evolved in a silo with no connection with neighboring languages...
@tacfoley I agree. I didn't thought that she was a good teacher as a teenager, but with maturity I'm even less impressed. Anyway 25 years later, I got over it and I'm just restarting learning German.
Not to let a rotten teacher spoil the whole language...
Most language teachers in France are extremely lazy intellectually, that’s why we are so bad at speaking English
@@sebastienh1100 To be fair, my first English teacher was great. High energy, motivated and motivating. Throughout my 7 years of Collège/Lycée, I mostly had good or decent English teachers. My daughter also had an amazing teacher for her first year that made her love the course. Great teachers make a difference! One of the possible explanations that I heard about why French people suck at English (and the other way around) is that both languages use completely different frequencies which render pronunciation very hard for each other, (unless we spend a lot of time on it, or start at a young age)
@@allandnothing5338 - about pronunciation I totally agree w you - only starting very early would help
@@allandnothing5338 What are "frequencies" in a language ? I've never read that word in this context
Can I add some tricks?
TRICK 4: All but four English words ending in "ion" are the same in French: impression, condition, indication etc.
TRICK 5: Replace "ical" in English with "ique" in French and you're almost there. For example: practical, economical, strategical become pratique, economique, strategique.
One more thing---the French----like the British and unlike Americans write "mathématiques" and "maths." Unlike the British, the French actually treat "maths" as a plural word.
Of course, those are perfectly valid but I don't think there's much point teaching them explicitly as tricks as they're so obvious. They're just simple versions of the modifications you have to use to get from école -> scole -> school, and anyone is going to guess them without needing to be told.
Thank you Rob. These are pretty cool. Sometimes listing the "tricks" explicitly helps those of us who are studying the language so it's very appreciated 😊
May I ask for the 4 English words that are the exception for Trick 4 pls?
I agree with TC it would be nice to know the four words.
@@beeble2003 Hmm, I don't know. As someone with only rudimentary French vocab it was a real joy to discover I already knew 1200 words 🙂 It's not really that obvious for someone of my limited ability at French.
I'm late for this comment. There is kindness, intelligence, edition skill, pedagogy, simplicity, clarity and very interesting common sense all included in this video.. 😳 Have a big like and thank!
Greetings from Switzerland (french native speaker) Sorry for my poor English. Subscribed!
I'm American and I have been learning French for three years now. This video was both interesting and helpful. It gave me a just bit more perspective. Thanks
Dont give up! Not every French person is good at their own Language its difficult like German
@@Der_Gewagte That's right, French people are not always very good at their own language, especially nowadays, but it's not because it's difficult (while it is indeed) but because the education system is collapsing, victim of leftist ideological fads.
Nevertheless my impression is that German is far more difficult and even just unattainable, for me at least. Ok first I'm an old man now so it's too late anyway and second I might not be completely objective since I must confess that I'm French ... but I have a clue: French might not be so difficult since even 4 years old children speak French easily here (I'm kidding ...).
However I have a very good friend who is German and we communicate with Skype from time to time, remaking the world so to speak but ... in English since he doesn't speak a word of French, although it's quite easy, and I don't speak a word of German since it's very difficult ... 😉. Regards
Another thing that demonstrates how the Norman "es-" words in trick #1 is how some of those words still have English forms that DIDN'T lose the "e". For example from your list modern French "état" not only is related to "state" but also "estate"; French "étranger" is related to not just "stranger" but also "estranged"
How about "special" vs "especial"?
@@saumitrachakravarty Yes, in a similar way, but here the French version lost the "e" leaving just the "s" (which restored the word to how it was in Latin originally) So older forms of French had "especial" and "especialment". In modern French that "e" didn't end up sticking around, but in the meantime it did leave English with "especially"
A closely related word is "species", which in English is a later borrowing from Latin (spelling and all) However in modern French it's "espèce", holding onto that added "e" This is a pattern that happened to a lot of words: in late Latin people started spelling them with a leading "i", which later turned into an "e". In some words the French eventually dropped the consonant (leaving just the "é"), in other cases they veered back toward classical Latin and dropped the "e", in other words both letters still hang around. Another example of that last form is Latin "sperare" (to hope) which became French "espére"
@@mitchblank You meant "espère" (with the accent "grave", not "aigu") or "espérer", but your comments are very interesting. However, I have to admit I dont see the relation between the French word "état" and the English word "estate". They do look alike, but they mean completely different concepts, don't they?
@@marctheriault5531 they do have the same origin, the Latin word "status". Which, incidentally also exists in English, and which would also be rendered "état" in French.
A couple of other seemingly unrelated English words derive from the same origin: static; statement; even the verb "to stand", if you dig even deeper.
@@marctheriault5531 No they don't . Etat et state sont deux mots équivalents. Estate provient du même mot et peut signifier aussi état dans le sens de condition (au sens de statut), mais aussi se rapproche de établissement. Etat (comme dans "bon état") ramene aussi a la notion d'essence, de constitution. Btw espérer c'est aussi attendre: 'esperar' en castillan..
Trick 4: replace "eu" with "o" in most words
FR -> EN
majeur -> major
interieur -> interior
terreur -> terror
erreur -> error
So, Britain left the O when they voted for Brexit? :)
this ones more minorly helpful
That's the suffix -or they both come from latin and have equivalents in other language too.
@@hurktang It is possible, but in any case it usually works
not really a trick though. they're basically pronounced the same anyway so anyone with no knowledge of french can easily tell what they are
I've been fighting with French for years. I think I've learned as much in the last ten minutes. Thanks for that!
American in France for 20 years, never saw shortcuts like these. Brilliant! Now, if only you could come up with shortcuts to recognize the pairing of run-on vowel sounds !
Absolutely brilliant. Most progress I’ve ever made in French in under 15 minutes.
Lot of words are similar but sometimes they doesnt means same thing.
As a french i see 4 words french can recognize in your com.
Absolutely brilliant. Absoluement brillant.
Progress progrès. Minutes minutes.
indeed~~
Most progress I’ve made in 40 years!
You just wasted 15 minutes on a trash tier language.
Kevin, I agree. It's cool to be able to understand these words at a glance, instead of learning them through individual memorization.
As a french, I've learned something ! And I'd say that your pronunciation of 'écureuil' is far better than my 'squirrel' pronunciation 😁
I noticed Rob messes up the "u" french vowel sound in écureuil , since this vowel sound does not exist in english, this is the only part of the word he needs to get it perfectly
c'est guillaume le conquerant, pas le guerrier. duh.
@@backintimealwyn5736 he said guerrier because he wanted to add another example with guerrier/warrior
@@backintimealwyn5736 Il ne parle pas de Guillaume le conquérant, il parle de celui que les écureuils apprennent à l'école de de la foret : Guillaume le guerrier. C'était un écureuil du 13ème siècle qui a accompli de grand exploits, il aurait terrassé une mouffette avec sa fronde d'un seul gland.
Äs sze Scherman Ai bätter säi nahssing hier.....
This is why I have always been fascinated by languages! When I was 14, my father gave me a book called "Looking at Language" and I am thoroughly binging your videos since I discovered you 20 minutes ago. Fascinating stuff! I’m French Canadian and always noticed the é=st but accent circonflex was truly eye opening. The Norman conquest had a huge impact on English language. Since then I had to learn German, and more recently Spanish. I sometimes think I would have enjoyed a career in linguistics. thanks again for the informative video!
You are a delight tonight! After moving to Quebec five years ago from British Columbia, Canada, I am finally willing to learn French. The move is now permanent. Well, at 63 years this is not an easy task. I am learning online and read much of what I am learning so your tricks will come in handy. Non l'ecole pour moi!
I probably learned more in the 12 minutes watching this video than I did in 5 years of learning french at school.
Mais où est la fourchette rouge ?
Ditto!
@@momolasticot6562, 🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Ferme la bouche.
Ouvre la fenêtre.
Ferme la porte.
I'm good, aren't I?!
The only thing schools teach is school life.
Everything else (languages, math, science, history, etc.) you have to learn on your own. :D
My great grandmother from Germany used to translate letters we got from our family in Spain. She didn't know Spanish but she knew German, English, and some Latin from going to church when she was little. She would tell us, "Maybe it's not all right but you'll get it. " I'm sure she was using many similar tricks just between four languages instead of two.
I don't speak Spanish either yet I can read it a bit because I'm French speaking English and Italian.
3 languages close to Spanish. Easy 😄
I understand that. I speak no Portuguese but when flying to Lisbon on holiday a few years ago I found I could read most of the in-flight magazine without any problem.
It sure is possible. When you speak french, you can learn Spanish, English, Italian and Portuguese faster than it would take to learn a single language like Chinese or Japanese. It's all intermingled. Like most words ending in "tion" are the same in these languages.
As a native English speaker who knows just barely enough French to get by and a little bit of Spanish, I was able to speak a little with people who spoke fluent Spanish but almost no English and no French. I understood a lot of what they said because it was so similar to French. And if I wanted to say something to them but didn't know the word in Spanish I would sometimes try using the word in French. And more often than not it worked!
Those days were fun.
I absolutely love how you make things funny and we understand them so easily!
THANKS A LOT GENTLEMAN👏🏼
I'm amazed at how much history I learn from your videos.
As a french person that had a tough time learning english, this is so cool!! Should definitely be taught in school.
Exactement ! J'ai toujours pensé que l'étymologie était très importante mais malheureusement rarement enseignée à l'école
My french teacher taught the hat one and history of Normandy french vs Paris which was cool
French class would've been much easier for me if I was taught these tricks.
Yep school is a pure shit to learn english.
Ona. Tous appris l’anglais avec Les séries et youtube on vas pas se mentir
Francais!
Studied French through 2 years in college and no one bothered to tell me any on this. FANTASTIC. Most effective lesson I’ve had.
Moi Aussi - never told this in my evening classes!
I’m French, and I’ve to be honest that I use some of these tricks myself 😂 The word Intérêt, to know on which « e » the « ^ » is, I just go from the english « interest ».
I can confirm that his explanation was really good. I wish you to be able to speak French perfectly one day, good luck!
Right? I’m older trying to learn and this lesson actually helps! It’s much harder to get things to stick in my brain than it used to be 😂
Same here. I lived in France for 3 years and studied the crap out of French and never knew this. Oh well, Mieux vaut tard que jamais!
@@maryannspicher Try zinc. I take one 30-mg zinc tablet three times a week. After about three months, I found my memory had improved noticeably. For example, I almost completely stopped suffering from the "hereafter" disease. You know: you walk from one room to another and then wonder "What am I here after?". I'm 75.
I am addicted to your videos, Rob! I learn a lot from them, but I must confess that I watch them as much for your sense of humor as I do for the learning experience. Thank you!
I've just recently found this channel, and I'm HOOKED! I love entomology as a hobby, and this channel talks about it as a job! Well done!
I'm French, it's funny because when I don't know the word in English, I say that word in French with an English accent 😊and in eighty percent of the cases it works, the English speaker can understand. Thanks for your tricks.
One of my favourites is ÉCHAFAUDAGE
É goes to S
CH goes to C
The U needs the L change
And finally AGE words are ING words
Vowels are the glue that can change to other vowels
So we can see the English word magically appear as
SCAFFOLDING
There is no 2nd u; it’s échafaudage. So, check your spelling. But don’t worry, most French natives are in trouble with their own language (I’m non native but my toe-nails always roll upwards when I read natives mix up the -er with é (as in je suis aller vs. je veux allé… - just like the their/there/they’re mixup. Pure cringe)). Sorry for being a spelling nazi, but actually not sorry (to be taken w/ a pinch o’salt).
@@g0d077 Yes, thanks I agree spelling is important even though the usage of the same words in France and England leads to no change or changes that make the words appear completely different.
I have corrected my mistake. It was from memory years ago. In fact it fits better with just one U!
Also we have the same spellings where the English common usage is different from the French common usage though if we look at perhaps a dozen nuances we can see they are the same origin and meaning but the two countries prefer subtle differences for the normal meaning.
ASSIST(ER) means to help in England but to be present in France. Of course you cannot help someone of you are not present even maybe if the help is over the phone or net or by recorded message when you would still be virtually present.
In France the significance of HELP is not there and only the fact people are in the same place at the same time.
So we speak of people ASSISTING at a pop concert meaning they ATTENDED the pop concert.
Il assiste au concert means He attends the concert.
@@g0d077 You're absolutely right, my friend :)
As a french citizen, I often fight over this kind of mistakes. In most of the cases, it's not a real " mistake ", sometimes, when writing a SMS, lazy people will voluntarily cut words or use a phonetic approach, as, for example, wanting to say " I want to ", wich most accurate translation in french would be " je veux ", they will use a simple " JV ", your current " I wanna ", but, the trouble is, the short " JV ", could be understood as " J'y vais ", literally, the phonetic pronounciation of the letters J and V, in french, wich translation is " I am leaving ".
This post was just to express how difficult it is, sometimes, to understand each other, even speaking the same language. I guess you have the same lazy ones in english or in american. This, added to the fact that some people do not even care about writing a correct sentence, or were, visibly, sleeping instead of attending classes, nowadays, understanding a SMS in french, is becoming more and more difficult. The age gap between users is a real factor, too.
I think you're not a real " nazi ", you just like your language and try to defend it, it's a noble behaviour to have ;)
Sorry for my english, as I wrote, I'm french. I tried to listen during english lessons, wich is my favorite other language, but nobody is perfect ;)
No language is static. New words are borrowed from other languages. New words are coined. Old words acquire new meanings and some old words simply die.
Acronyms play an important role today as does brevity.
Current usage is the 'grease' that smooths evolution and change.
Sorry for the awkward spelling and usage here. I am getting too old.
@@Wopayne Nah dude ! You're not getting old, you're just a bit more experienced ;)
I know, that's the lightmotive I always use not to seem too shabby or rusted. But you're right. Maybe, one day, earthlings will be able to use only one language to express theirselves with. Sorry, I don't really know if this sentence is correct, but I think you did understand what I meant, or, at least, I hope ;)
These videos are absolutely brilliant. Wish I’d had a language teacher like you, it would have been far more interesting and a helluva lot easier, more like cracking a code then learning a language.
Lord Willing, I'm heading to France in 6 weeks and I'm desperate to hack my French as quickly as possible!! I can see where this will be of value!! Thanks, Robwords!!
I grew up bilingual (French/German) and so I could easily and almost instinctively learn English somehow as if you could interlink French German and English.
But I was never able to explain it, but you did it for me.
Thank you for that you are amazing. Also thank you internet 😇
That's a wonderfully unique perspective!
Sorry about learning how to spell though!
I am French and 98% fluent in English, I can understand bits of German just with the phonetic pronunciation of words like he/she er/sie or by orthographic correlation as with is/ist/est. I love how all this reminds how much these three countries are tied in several levels.
@@Ndriana Indeed, I didn't really enjoy school n struggled with language's however I've learned alot more from reading subtitles n listening to other language's being spoken, RUclips is really good for this stuff!😁 unless you get some AI generated text n then it all goes right out of the window!😂💜✌️
That's how English speakers learn French and German, pal!
My personal favorite for rule #2 (since it confused me so much at first) is "goût" Just mentally turning it into "goust" doesn't help much at first. In english we have the word "gusto" which comes from the right latin root, but unless you know what it means in Italian it won't be of much help.
However if you eat something really bad you'll say it's... "disGUSTing" Hey, it's our old pal Latin helping us out here -- as long as you can remember that "dis-gust" approximately means "bad-taste" then it's easy to see what "goût" must mean.
Indeed, '"disgust'" in French is "dégoût" with the circumflex exactly where you'd expect it.
Gust, România
gusto Castilian
Goût, French
Also gustatory in English.
@@Rwizaify also gusto in in English! 😁
The English great vowel shift in the 16th century kinda did that one. Ou was "oo" or "oh" and never "ow" til then. Many old English words were given more "palatable" spelling too, such as Hus --> house. Without that spelling change before the great vowel shift we might by saying "thehrz uh moos in the hoos. Tahk it oot-seed" instead of there's a mouse in the house. Take it outside.
@@user-nf9xc7ww7m My grandfather and his many siblings grew up in northern MI, and they talked like that! (There's a moos in the hoos.) 😂
An addition to the "gu" and "w" swap is if the French word starts with "gue" it can be swapped with "wa" for the English word, as well as if the French word that starts with "gue" ends with the letter "e", that final "e" can be dropped for the English word.
Examples: _guêpe_ → _wâpe_ → _waspe_ → wasp
_guerre_ → _warre_ → _warr_ (war)
_guerrier_ → _warrier_ (warrior)
I absolutely love the videos that show how much we all have in common. Though these things are a result of war, death and conquest, at least today we can make something good out of all that suffering and see we are much more alike and related and enjoy both the similarities and the nice differences that also make us unique. I hope it results in "Hm, maybe I actually DON'T want that person dead after all."
I am fluent in Spanish, but started studying French. I started to realize how many English words come from French. Loved this video.
One trick that should work quite a bit for you as well (well, in general it's a trick used the other way around by other romance speakers, mainly French and Italian, when learning Spanish because otherwise these words will easily mess you up if you don't know even if you know another romance language and Latin because Castilian decided to Yolo it apparently) : if you see a french word starting with an F that you don't recognize, try to replace the F with an H and see for yourself: fourmi probably doesn't ring a bell, but what if I wrote it hourmi? Okay, maybe not quite yet,maybe drop the U if you still don't see it as French tends to have OU where Spanish has simply O (so hormi).
Yes indeed, fourmi is the french equivalent of hormiga (ant). This doesn't look like much, but it's definitely going to come in handy more often than you'd think.
@@sephikong8323 And they both come from the Latin "formica".
@@jetstream6389 And if you use Rob's rules, it applies to Spanish, too. E.g., Fr. meme becomes mesme, which looks like Sp. "mismo" - they both mean "same" .
And for me it's the opposite. I'm fluent in French and I started learning Spanish maybe like 2 months ago. And I'm still amazed how easy it is to understand written Spanish. Understanding natives Spanish speakers is ... something else 😬
Written language always seems to be easier! Understanding speakers at native speed is always tough! all the liason issues...and with Spanish, spoken language IS fast! I have read that Japanese is a little faster than Spanish. Well, we all have challenges. Spoken French is very challenging for me unless it is spoken slowly! Then you feel bad asking people to slow down!
After seven years of french in schools while young, and doing poorly at that, this has been the best language lesson I ever had. Thank-you!
Agreed!!
I agree, its invaluable
Wow, I already kinda understood some french without studying because of the similarities with my language, Italian, but now it's even more clear thanks to the knowledge of English I have 😂👍 this is great !!
Wonderful! What helps me is that I studied Spanish for many years so when I took French, I realized many of the words were very similar. Guerra is the Spanish word for war, very similar to guerre in French. This makes sense, as they’re so close to one another geographically. It’s been so long, though, that I have forgotten most of the French pronunciations.
Je suis Canadienne et parle dans "fran says . Ne pas plus facile mais i comprend
I am English first and I find it easier to look at pieces of several languages to get communicit is amazing how often meanings arrive when guessing on combination guesses.
This video has helped me learn more than any French lesson before. Actually UNDERSTANDING the relationship between French and English helps so much
As a French native speaker and English learner Because of the fact that many words in English come from french, it's so much easy in English for some words to find out which words they are related to in French. For instance in your comment you used the word "video" same meaning with " vidéo "in French, and " lesson" = leçon, relationship = relation, so = si
When I moved to Germany from US rather abruptly back in the 90’s (with virtually zero understanding of Deutsche), I tried a few courses of German and quickly discovered all they were doing was making me memorize German words. It really didn’t take. I discovered an enormously effective way of learning German myself: My American friends and I would just go to the pub, discreetly speak some English and hope someone would approach us to ask (usually in English) who we were, where we were from, etc and we start trying our best to speak German, only to be corrected by nearly half the pub! Germans rewarded genuine effort in learning their language, which really helped us all.
It was so much fun as German beer is *strong* and acted as the same “social lubricant” it does everywhere else in the world. One also lose some of their inhibition and are more willing to make a fool of themselves by slaughtering some German pronunciation . It was all in good fun and we became pretty decent German speakers. “Es tut mir leid” was one of the very first German phrases we learned and it served us well.
Well said, Niame. Just what I was thinking!
@@ToeCutter0 I learned German at the Goethe Institut (two sites). Immersion for several weeks. I realized that my German was pretty good when I found I could listen to the radio in German.
I agree that the best way to learn is to jump in the pool.
@@ToeCutter0 Read some more old-fashioned English (like 19th century detective stories), then just stare at German, and a remarkable amount of it becomes clear.
Doesn't help much with speaking, mind you.
I'm french and I think this video is lovely ! By the way, the french word for "coast" is also "côte", when used about wines (like "côte de bourg" or others...) it refers to the side of the valley where the vineyard grows, so a "côte" is always next to water... So yes, it is absolutely related to "coast".
I'd also add that ''côte'' also means ''rib'', as in what's to the sides of the thorax but I can't see a way to tie its etymology back to ''coast'' because they have different roots.
I think he must have mixed it up with côté in this case (which actually means side)
Bien trouvé, je ne l'avais pas remarqué 😶
@@jonahjlee No, it's really "côte" (I'm French too)
You've also got the "Côte d'Azur", literally the "azure coast", but better known in English as the "French Riviera".
This is one of the most satisfying RUclips videos I've ever consumed.
Congratulations man that... was something special.
Last night I stumbled across your series of videos and I became hooked. It's totally fascinating. I cannot stop watching them! Please keep up the excellent work.
Thanks David!
The most accessible , understandable approach to learning words from another language. As an old boy in his 60's and never learnt French, watching this was like opening a door to another world . If you don't teach for a living, you should. I would be happy to sit in your class 😅 ..... Oh and also thank you for using the word "Trick" ... I am so fed up with everyone saying "Hack"
Hi I'm French and I can teach you a lots of words in 3 second...ready...all English words who end with : TION are the same in French but a different pronunciation (une prononciation différente) révolution affirmation animation allocation etc... it won't teach how to speak French but it can be really useful
Have a lifted one and lots of good vibes from France
PS: to be honest imho English is THE language to speak in the world we live in...I'm pretty sure that 90% of the non English countries translate their news into English so to really understand how the world turn you need to understand English...not French! And when you know how things become sketchy here plus the corruption more and more visible...France is far from a democracy! The only right a French citizen have is to elect a person who is going to do he want after the election and people have no right to do anything about it except going in the streets protests and take the risk to loose an eye or a hand or worse...referendum are impossible to trigger and the last time we voted and said no to the Rome treaty 2 years after the government signed a copy 90% the same...to me it's totalitarianism not a democracy (not really a dictatorship as the fake opposition can express themselves totally free but they just speak nothing else happen)
You can translate "trick" by "truc" !
@@loganleborgne420 maybe if you don't abstain during all the other elections, you could call France a democracy ? We elect the national assembly, and indirectly we vote also for the senators, we vote for the european parliament, ... In fact, we vote a lot, but people like you just see the presidential election and never vote for the next five years and still complain...
If you think a country is a democracy only when everyone vote for everything, you don't understand how french people will never vote, like they already do. France is indisputably a democracy. If you don't think it is, then I will be happy to know what country is a true democracy in your eyes.
no apparent need of being so snobbish & i-n-t-e-l-e-k-t-u-a-l about something that has been buried by Samuel Johnson's 8th world's wonder [also the biggest mishap]
< 1755, A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson > *There are NO tricks - there are A DOZEN OF 'IRON-CLAD' RULES & A HALF-A-DOZEN OF PATTERNS* - they have been avoided & discarded since 1800 & kept out of the public. If one must know all 'bent 'grammar' roads and paths, between French Spanish Italian German English & Slavic languages, then one should consult the appendice to 3 major works on _Les Origines de la langue francoise_ par Mr. GILLES MENAGE, it contains more than 4000 pages. There are more than 100 pages of words from Latin & Greek, all European tongues', revealing 'insane transformations'. They are [mis]HAPPILY FORGOTTEN.
Mr. Gilles Menage was mostly dissappointed by the French Royal Academy's idio[ma]tic works & especially by the 1st Royal Academy's Dictionary, published in 1648. He wrote 2 critics & published the most elaborate works WHICH HAVE BEEN WITHDRAWN FROM THE INTERNATIONAL LINGUISTICS studies for 3,5 CENTURIES. One could find it here -
#pt1 ~ *1650 Les Origines de la langue francoise=1844 Menage Gilles 1613-1692*
#pt2 ~ *1675 Observations de monsieur Menage sur la langue francoise=1280,*
_La "Segonde partie" Menage Gilles_1613-1692, La "Segonde partie" defend la 1ere partie attaquee par Bouhours dans "Doutes sur la langue francoise" (Paris, 1674) et "Remarques nouvelles sur la langue francoise" (Paris, 1675)_
#pt3 ~ *1694 Dictionnaire etymologique, ou, Origines de la langue francoise=952, Menage Gilles, Pierre de Caseneuve 1591-1652*
archive.org/details/fre_b1887888
archive.org/details/fre_b1887668
archive.org/details/fre_b2063424
➡ I must correct myself - the author is not being neither snobbish nor put-on to put off people by a #condone-ing posture. He is just being British & ignoramus. _- I still wonder if one could ever become a little bit humbler after having learnt something_
@@loganleborgne420 and as 'free' as the rest of the world may view America, we here feel much the sane way, that our government , once controlled and populated with citizens acting on the behalf of the citizens that elected them, are now but power seekers working for the power holding political parties or financial interests that have funded their campaigns. Government is now a tool of oppression ofvthe people rather than a tool functioning to protect the people.
Perhaps it's time both our countries "refresh the Tree of Liberty" as we did nearly 2½ centuries ago.
The "accent circonflexe" for deleted "s" is very important, as it doesn't just notify "a "s" used to be there", but "a "s" still exists in the word "family". Forêt, forestier, hôspital, hospitaliser, côte, costaux (muscles), etc...
I'd add that in some regions (like the French part of Switzerland for example), the pronunciation differs when there's an accent. "Pâte" (\pɑt\) vs "Patte" (\pat\) or "Côte" (/kot/) vs "Cote" (/kɔt/). In some other parts of France, it's indeed the same sound.
@@StephSinalco No ontly in Switzerland, in the region around the city of Lyon, we also speak like that.
@@Heimrik01 mostly all over the east of france actually (franche-comté, alsace, etc)
@@StephSinalco Swiss French is cool! Spoken slowly I am Italian
How are Nice biscuits pronounced? Is it Nice, or Nice?
My Daddy was a great linguist. He said that one should be taught the similarities between 2 related languages before anything else. To open the door and give you confidence right from the start. Makes very good sense.
Just a little detail, the actual french is not exactly based on the dialect from Paris, but the one that was spoken in Touraine (south of Paris, in the Loire’s valley)
It was a bit different from the parisian, especially for the intonation.
The video is also very fun for french speaker, good job !
No, Rob is absolutly right for obvious reasons, both phonetical, political, etc.. Purest French from the Loire valley is a legend due to the moving of the court from Paris, to the Loire valley in the 16th, followed by the intellectuals of course. Touraine dialect belongs together with Angevin, etc. to the western Oil dialects, French is mainly from Central dialects, first of all Parisian
Hi! I have English and Russian as my native languages, and I have learned Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Czech and Bulgarian. I noticed many similar of these "tricks" which they never tell you in any learning resources, so I had to kinda do it all myself. It was very simple to learn Polish and Bulgarian, because all I really had to do was learn the "tricks" and at that point I already knew like 95% of the whole language. The funny thing was that within a week or 2 of learning, I could write full sentences and have hours long conversations with native speakers about everything in writing, but I could NOT understand the spoken language at all. Because while reading/writing I have a lot of time to look at the words and do all the tricks necessary to understand/to be understood. But it takes a much longer time to get used to the speech, and also there are like 50+ of these tricks and applying them all multiple times per word takes a lot of brain power, but after a while of getting used to it, it becomes like automatic and easy!
Slavic languages are weird and it's hard to explain to anyone who doesn't know them, but when you know one and want to learn another one, it's not like you're learning a new language, but like learning a different set of rules and grammar and pronunciation of certain sounds, and a different way of using the words that you already know.
I can try to make an example of the process, for English speakers. Every word that ends in s now ends in sh, except for ves, kes, les, pes which now end in th. And ms, ks, ns is now ch. So hands = handsh, and gloves = gloveth, mittens = mittench.
All words where there is "LE" after a consonant, now is "ILL". Possible = possibill.
Short i sound changes to oi after s, sh, z, f, v, and after r it becomes ai. After t it becomes short e, unless it is a -ting ending then it will become ching. So now, sitting = soiching, sticks = stekch. Ripples = raipillth.
For making past tense, for words where -ed gave an extra syllable (e.g faded-yes, fixed-no) you replace -ed with -otch. Where there is no extra syllable, you replace -ed with ock. For irregular verbs there are random changes that you basically have to learn yourself and there are no tricks for them.
Whenever there is a letter u or o after n, the n will become a soft ñ, and when e or a come after n, then n will turn into m unless it's a silent e then it'll stay as n.
Every word beginning with in/im is now an/am.
Letter r at the start of a word or in between vowels is now sh, unless the stress falls onto the next syllable then it'll stay as r. So orange = oshange, but arrange stays the same.
Ňow I'm shiching a sentence with these mew shuleth, but ash you may see, ňot much hash changock. You can stell understand what I'm saying. I would meed to make dozench more "tshaickch" (tricks lol) for thish to be like a mew language.
So there is my example of what it's like to learn another Slavic language, it's not even like learning a language, you know what I mean? It's just a bunch of stuff like that. But way more of them than what I wrote. A lot more vowel changes and letter changes and grammar differences, and word order differences, etc. but almost all based on the same words. It's quite similar as well learning Portuguese when you already know Spanish, just change a few little things with the pronunciation and grammar and the choice of words, then you're done! You now know a whole new language! You don't have to learn thousands of new words ,but just apply this new system of things to already existing words...
Sometimes the choice of words is different as well, you know, if you say "I didn't mean to do that" in russian, it's like "I accidentally" but in polish it's like "I unintentionally" and in bulgarian it's like "I'm sorry, that's just the way things went" haha
Wow... If you ever start to give classes or any-workshop-like courses online, please write it here somewhere. I'm a sucker for learning new languages, if only bits and pieces at time and I really like playing with words that way but generally don't have enough time to figure all the rules out on my own. It would be so interesting as a Slovenian speaker with a little bit of knowledge of Croatian and Serbian to discover similarities with Polish, Czech, Slovak, Russian etc.
Unable it seems to write English w o using word “like”
@Olivier Verdys it gets on my nerves these “likes”
“You know”
“I mean”
“Sorta”
“Kinda”
The longest comment ever...lol
@@user-rk8yv2pq2e The longest, but the more interesting lol
Turkish has a lot of loanwords from French, and mercifully Turkish is spelled phonetically so once you figure out how it sounds if you know French you can often tell what the word is (such as banliyö, which in French is banlieu, or suburb, or bisiklet).
I was once talking to a native Turkish speaker who spoke English but not French, and every time she told me a technical word I'd point out that it's the same word in French (or some other language). Eventually she threw up her hands and said "there's no such thing as Turkish!"
In Turkish, we have approximately 5400 French loanwords. Those are mostly the modern daily vocabulary. Thanks for the comment!
When I was in Izmir, I learned that when Attaturk changed the written script from Arabic to Latin, he brought over French linguists to do it. When they came to a French word with no equivalent Turkush word, they just moved the French word over.
@@brianmorisset4489 That and the influence of France on the Ottoman Empire, for example, the French literally renamed an entire Ottoman Province while the ottomans ruled it lmao. it was called "Eyalet-i-Sham" Province of Sham, which was the name for Syria for thousands of years in the area, but it was renamed to the French version of "Assyria" (Syria) in the Tanzimat reforms.
I absolutely loved your video, this was actually the first one I've seen! I started studying French a week ago lol and I realised how close some words were to English. A bonus for me was to figure that some other words not similar to English, were similar to Brazilian Portuguese (I am Brazilian). Said that, it was easier for me to read the whole text and do my homework! But your tips /video is totally another level 💛💚 ! Definitely following you and sharing it! Merci beaucoup
One
So interesting to see how languages evolve over time. Having seen your video on German words I am even more interested in this subject. Languages have always been a hobby for me - never fluent in any (maybe English with a Scottish accent) but I love to pick up a few words when on holiday. I even undertook a teach yourself Arabic course (spoken and written). Look forward to any tricks you might have on Arabic 😜. Thank you so much.
Oh! That's interesting!
I am a French guy living in the US. I had never realized there was a pattern behind these adaptations!
I help English speakers learn some French. I'll point them to these tricks!
And by the way, your pronounciation of "ecurueil" is fine. We, French people, just tend to be picky for the sake of it!
Funny you never realized there was a pattern. I guess they stopped explaining things in detail a few decades back. When I was a kid, the reason for "é" and "î" and similar accented letters was something that was explained in primary school. Ah, French education reforms...
Excellent ! As a Québécois, I had to learn both languages from the get go; why these simple and obvious tricks were never taught escapes me ! Bravo for pointing them out and I will certainly pass the tricks along to my fellow quebecers who surely need the help! Kudos!
C’est vrai ça faciliterait l’apprentissage dans les deux sens
Et comment!
I’m only at trick one so idk if this is mentioned but a lot of the “ô/ê” in french can be replaced with “os/es” because the hat basically replaces an “s” that was previously in the langage, a few examples of that are:
forêt = forest
hôpital = hospital
arrêter = arrester (arresting)
edit: oops! it *is* in the video
I will add that is not a ghost letter without use...when you're looking for the adjective associated with it, it tell you to add the "s" again. Forêt: forestier, hôpital:Hospitalier.....
as a previous french speaker this helps me a ton, thanks
As a French-speaking person, the hat absolutely makes a difference in pronunciation. It's the difference between "Cote" (Pronounced like a "cot" you might sleep on) and "Côte" (pronounced like a "coat" you would wear in the snow)
Great point. I should perhaps have explained that it doesn't always make no difference... just when it has been inserted purely to mark out a letter being removed.
I wonder if COSTE was being pronounced COST or COAST (or even COSTER).
Anyway, thanks for this.
I think it depends on your dialect, some people don't make any difference between a letter with a circumflex and one without.
Well it depends on the letter, ô and ê do have fixed pronunciation but â î û don't change it
@@reda84. â does sound different from a. Contrast "Chapeau" and "Château". But yes, î and û don't sound different from the unaccented letters
@@Kafaldsbylur je suis français et je les prononce de la même façon
My French lessons never taught me this, this should be standard/fundamental. Awesome job thank you ❤️
Ptit flop le sang 🔥🔥🔥
My english lessons too
english lessons are terribly bad in france too
I enjoyed every minute and now will feel more confident reading French newspapers.
Interesting on the e -> s. Spanish seems like the in between (escuela, escuchar, especias), but in some Spanish accents, eg Cuban/Caribbean, the s is often dropped or a soft pause (especias pronounced more like e-pecia). Fascinating to see similar patterns!
I noticed that, too. My favorite example is the name Esteban/ Steven/ Étienne.
A little while ago I was learning an organ piece called "Fête", so it was lying on the piano as my piano pupils came in for their lessons. They were mostly prep school age so they had done a little French at school, but didn't know that word. I explained to them about your second Trick (the derivation of our word "feast"), and they were always interested. When my 11 year old Spanish pupil arrived I expected him to get it. He had an analytic mind anyway. Before I could say anything he saw the music and said: "I know what that means". I then saw he was pointing, not to the title, but to the name of the composer, Langlais. "It means The Englishman" he said, "It would have been spelt L'Anglais in the olden days". Well, that had never occurred to me. You can learn a lot from your pupils. Of course he understood "fête" immediately.
He was wrong, then. L’anglais means the English man in French currently, not in the olden days. And while I think I never heard the name Langlais as a French and not a piano fan, this kind of last name where the apostrophe disappears to create an incorrect word in French is very common, and it was even more in the olden days
And a fête is not exactly a feast. Though it’s close, a fête is specifically a party and originate from the word festin, witch is the correct traduction of feast (as in a very good meal). But that was a pretty good use of this rule.
@@Alkios I think he means that when the name was new, in the old days, people understood it as to mean The Englishman, as a description of the person, and it would probably have been written as "L'Anglais" (supposing they could write) but as it became more of a name and less of a description, the original meaning was ignored and it got written Langlais. He is (probably) speaking of the evolution of the name, not of the French language.
I've seen this particular name, as well as the variant Langlois.
@@alestane2 nvm. He's prolly French and you know the French never miss an opportunity to correct ppl lol
@@Alkios Party is what actually comes to mind when we encounter the word feast as it’s very close to festa and fiesta.
#1 and #2 are good examples of where Modern English looks a lot more like Latin than Modern French does. All of those words beginning with "é" began with "s" in Latin. They became "es" in Romance (and remain "es" in most modern Romance languages) but became "é" in Modern French. Same thing with #2.
Some other common ones:
"ca" in Latin usually became "cha" in French: "cattus" → "chat", "cantare" → "chanter", "castellum" → "château", etc.
"al" in Latin usually became "au" in French: "falsus" → "faux", "palma" → "paume", "salmo" → "saumon", etc.
(Latin words beginning with "cal" will see both of those changes in French: "caldus" → "chaud", "caldarium" → "chaudron", etc.)
"am" in Latin often became "aim" in French: "fames" → "faim", "amare" → "aimer", etc.
Often there are other changes, particularly in the vowels, that can hide some of these. For example, "canis" -> "chien" … the "ca" became "cha" as expected but then the vowel changed too, moving the French word farther away from the Latin root.
Thank you for taking the time to post this ❤️
But the change from ca- to cha- didn't spread to the three northern dialects: Belgian Wallon, Picard, and William's Normand. Hence the two layers in English.
Hey there Rob! I have just had the pleasure of finding your channel! The first video that I came across of yours was your translate German to English, and I absolutely LOVED it!
There was a short time that I was really interested in learning how to speak such a* bold but beautiful language. Alas, as we all know far too well, life seemed to put a hold on that conquest. For now, anyway! Ha, ha, ha! It's exactly these sorts of tricks, hints and hacks that are so very important for people to see. It really gives many of us a confidence boost. I feel as though many people just need to be able to believe in themselves and really understand that learning another language (even if it's just enough to carry a conversation) is totally possible and ultimately not half as difficult as it has been made out to be!
Thank-you to the creators such as yourself, Duolingo & babble+! For spreading awareness! Ha, ha, ha.
Also, I was just struck with another possible add-on to this video's number two trick. It's very similar to the ENGLISH hack when doing basic abbreviations. I.e. old = Ol' , little= Li'l , etc... When a character is used in place of a letter that was once a part of the word. It's the same in the sense that in English writing (sort of only really applies when writing out slang or speech pattern) We tend to use the apostrophe in the same way the French language uses the "hats." (Â, Ê, Î, Ô ,Û).
Augh!! Just so very fascinating to me! I just cannot seem to get enough of language, words and processes!! Thank you so very much!
*edit: a not an
I took French in middle and high school, and had never seen écuireil before but was able to work it out to squirrel before you revealed it simply because I knew of the whole é/s thing.
Actually, I remember learning of all three of these differences, but they were never really pointed out by the teacher.
My French skills have pretty much been replaced by my Japanese skills, though, which I learned in college and living over in Japan.
This is superb! I genuinely went "Whoa!" when you showed the examples!
That's the reaction I strive for! Thanks for watching.
Exactly! This is awesome!!!!!
Guoah
I have always found reading to understanding French and Vietnamese very difficult , your method is great, there is hope still , just brilliant thanks.
@@RobWords this needs to be taught in schools. It's such a impactful thing.
These 3 rules in the front of a book would make learning and understanding so much easier.
And as we go through the book writing "swap" words could be a thing.
It is worth noting that the ES word group can be also found in Spanish but they kept both the E and the S.
True - although the rest of the word is often spelled a bit differently, as Spanish retained Latin suffixes more often than French did.
True. However, Spanish has, essentially, no words starting with 's' followed immediately by another consonant, so have great difficulty pronouncing English words such as 'school,' 'stamp,' and 'Scott.' I worked in Mexico with a co-worker named Scott. All our Mexican co-workers called him Escott (accent on the 2nd syllable). They just could not do it!
Same in Portuguese.
And so strongly an aspect of Spanish pronunciation that they often have trouble pronouncing the English word without pronouncing the nonexistent "E" in words like "school" and "street."
@@jamesmcinnis208 A bit like why English-speakers would have trouble pronouncing some of the initial consonant clusters that are common in Slavic languages (as I experienced for myself when I taught myself to sing March of the New Army)!
That is SO COOL MAN! I fell in love with the languages once more. Thanks for this video and keep up the good work
Fascinating video. I never studied French in high school and your video makes me wish I had. I also liked your German letters transpositions video and it made perfect sense since I now study German! Go language learning!!
Great topic ! I'm a French native speaker from Belgium, and in our dialect (Walloon) the word "guêpe" spells "wespe" ! The word "côte" in French has several meanings, like "coast" or "seaside", but il also means a slope, and the "Côtes-du-Rhône" are called so because the vineyard grows on the slopes along the river.
Côtes also means ribs as in « I like my côtes levées with a Côtes-du-Rhone » 😎
@@Christian_Martel This meaning is reflected in the English "costal/intercostal" - to do with the ribs/between the ribs ("une douleur costale/intercostale", where the disappearing "s" returns in the adjectival form, as in the adjective derived from "hôpital", "hospitalier"). Not far away from "coastal" - to do with the coast.
German is my second language, and "wespe" is the German word for wasp!
This is the first French lesson I have ever enjoyed. Thank you :)
A good teacher.
Excellent lesson, Rob. One of my favourites. Great stuff
I have always been interested in the origins of words so I find this channel quite fascinating. Well done!
Very clever, and should be taught the first week of French language class. It makes sense!
Yeah, why isn't this stuff taught in school, much like Phonics to primary school kids.
It is taught in French classes though, I’m surprised it is not taught abroad. Especially the second trick, as this is a very good answer to why we put those useless hats
And it adds a bit of magic to the learning too! My mother (a highschool teacher of both English and French) taught me most of those too. Very cool - suddenly one is way more competent, and it fun to solve the ”riddles” when you come across them. :) Thanks for this video!
@@Pwassoncru OMFG ! They're not useless, they MAKE French.
Silly.
@@goofygrandlouis6296 No, they are useless. They bring no context, no meaning, no additional information. They show an origin and the family of word they belong to, but a lot of words belong to the same family even though they lost a letter through the ages.
We often modify the language to make it more modern. Recently, we removed the hats on "i" and "u" (except when they added meaning like in "jeûne", "mûr" ..), which proves even more that they are not needed :)
🐿️ I'm inspired to repeat my experiment reading a french book without having studied french before. The odds to get the story better this time have suddenly increased.
Bonne chance!!
You'll need it
This video is beyond amazing! I love your channel. Greetings from France.
Merci!
Super cool! I love seeing which sounds won out over time as various languages diverged. I'm also just beginning to learn French, so this is going to be immensely helpful!
Lovely to see someone not just learning a language but clearly really enjoying learning why it is the way it is!
As an anglophone who went to a french-language primary school, these tricks are deeply ingrained as part of my "frenchification" routine. Which is to say, if I didn't know the French word, I'd just transform an English word through methods including these three tricks and many others. It usually worked.
Yeah as I was watching I realize I do this but not consciously aware of these rules, I just start mushing the word around in my mouth until the root becomes and the “decorative” parts separate.
I don't know why these tricks never occurred to me as a bilingual anglo in QC ...
When he described the trick and then the french words came on screen it blew my mind each time haha
Mind is blown.) I always felt somewhat confident about learning French because it is known that if you come from a country that has a lot of shared history with France you automatically have some vocabulary by default . You just broadened that starters pack. Thank you.)
I am really enjoying these videos! I think I have grasped more about French in this one than I learnt in school fifty years ago!!
I've spent a small fortune trying to learn French.... eventually gave up - I learnt more from this short video than from all the lessons combined. Un grand merci!
Come in Québec bro !
Why ? French for an English speaker is pretty easy and the opposite is true aswell.
@Alex Woland Helllllllll nooooooo 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
You don't need to spend money, just spend time with french! You're welcome in France :)
As bilingual Squirrel from Quebec, this makes a lot more sense than I expected it to based on the first few seconds.
Funny thing is that my family originates from when William the Conqueror conquered England too...
P.S. Your french pronunciation is actually quite good. Not perfect, but better than most non-native speakers.
Agreed. As someone who comes from Ontario near Quebec.
@@SarahK86 Hello! Mrs sarah, can you guide me more on how to speak French because am not a french speaker but am interested in learning French language
How come you are such a nice and presentable presenter. Its just so comfortable watching your videos. And so straight forward and informative.
This made my morning! Currently teaching myself French, so this video was absolutely brilliant.
Another trick is when you see a word (verb) ending in "er", try to replace this "er" by "iate", it doesn't always work of course, but it can help! For example : apprécier >appreciate,
négocier >negociate, initier>initiate , dissocier>dissociate etc...
Yep - the reason for this is that French borrowed the infinitive of these verbs from Latin (initiare), while English borrowed the passive particle (initiatum).
I just want to say as a French Canadian that there are different French accents, and that you said écureuil just fine for me, in fact, good job! I know it's a nightmare to pronounce for non-francophones 😆
You're nailing the pronunciation of Rs 😊
Thank you for the support! One of my best pals is une Quebecoise. Perhaps she's be subtly influencing me!
@@RobWords Your accent sounds to me like what I'd call a "français international." More towards European but not Parisian. My personal favourite francophone accent is from Switzerland and is, like yours, a very neutral accent that fits anywhere (unlike my native "joual" or slang XD).
I didn't know for the gu-w! I knew about the other tricks because at some point I noticed a pattern between words like "fenêtre" and "forêt" and "défenestration" and "déforestation" and I spotted the S after the E where the accent would be.
This is my first video of yours but I'm so glad I stumbled here; already subscribed ^^
I wonder which is more amusing, an English person trying to pronounce “écureuil” or a French person trying to say “squirrel”.
@@ncot_tech anybody non-german trying to say Eichhörnchen maybe
I also thought his pronunciation was relatively good (I am also French Canadian).
Excellent teaching. Kudos to you Sir
The W and GU thing is very interesting, and can also be applied to other Romance languages such as Portuguese and Spanish. In fact, it is not uncommon to hear from Hispanophones who happen to have a thicker accent when speaking English the G sound in W words (e.g. gwy-fi for Wi-fi or goodlands for woodlands).
Right, but most words of Germanic origin in these languages are from French. In addition, there is something specific in French : even words of Latin origin were contaminated by the Germanic pronunciation : Latin vespa > Gallo-Romance wespa > guêpe, as opposed to avispa in Spanish or vespa in Italian.
as a French person i had noticed pretty much all of these, except for the "w-" to "gu-" and that blew my mind!!!!!!
I remember being very confused about William and Guillaume being related, but now i understand!
Is it possible that a word guuarre might have once existed in English ? Or Guuilliaum ?
Et en picard gâteau se dit watiau.
When I read Les Piliers de la Terre, they were talquing abour King Stephen who was actually named Étienne in French history, I just now realised that it's the É / ST rule !
So I'm French and this video is incredible. Never realized there was so much connections between our respective words!
Also, you can trust this guy: His French is perfectly legit. Bonne journée à tous!
Wow! Thanks so much for this, the "Guarantee"/"Warranty" thing blew my mind - Linguistics is so awesome!
That’s amazing, I’ve been studying French for a while and I always noticed the similarities but never could point like this, I guess I was making them subconsciously. Much better knowing how to do it now, merci!
I'm from Canada, a country with French and English as official languages, and I've had a lifetime (63 years) of seeing the similarities.
Joual, the French dialect of Quebec, is based on Breton French and Norman French, so some of the similarities are more obvious.
Great video.
For me that difference is the frustrating thing about Quebec French though, it makes sense for more international French speaking needs so people who speak a French dialect in countries in Africa, the Carribean, or Asia can understand you; but French speakers in Europe including some Swiss and people from France can't understand global French.
Allan, hi! I am a French Canadian of French Normand descent. Joual is not a really dialect. It was spoken strickly in urban Montreal. When I was a kid some montrealers still spoke Joual. It's more like CREOL . It is a bastardisation of French with English. It was spoken by the working class. French AND Englo. Joal is a fusing of 2 languages as the French canadians working class in Montreal worked in strickly Anglophone environments; Their boses were English; Their technical terms were English....They also married English speaking immigrants ....mostly Irish and Scottish. I would go so far as to say that JOUAL was spoken mostly by children of these Franco- Anglo working classes parents. So hence JOUAL.
@@valerieannegagnon8803 Thanks.
In the american context (as in continent, not necessarily usa), it's generally understood to be an ellipsis to reference some differences that are important in said context. If you don't understand them, that's fine, you don't have to. Europe is on the other side of the world and therefore not in the forefront of our minds in everyday speech in conversations that don't involve europeans.
@@Light-Painter It means they speak French as first language.
I like “Guichet”. It’s the French word for a service counter - eg at a railway station or post office. But when it came into English is meant “a little gate” - ie of the simple rural sticks-and-a-cross-bar type, often as a pedestrian access next to a larger gate. By visual association, the kind of metal grill you often used to get at such counters looked like a “little gate” to the French. What else looks like a little gate with three sticks and a couple on top? A wicket. Because Norman French brought its version of guichet - “wiket” into English and the original meaning of “wicket” in English was “a little gate” - which is what it looks like. Voilà, the connection between buying a railway ticket in France and The Ashes.
As an Indian, I only know the "wicket" from the game of cricket. Had no clue it came from French. Thanks for the info
That is brilliant!! I shall add it to my french explanations for my sport mad husband who strugglrs now we live in France!!
I’m Canadian and we don’t use the word wicket, many people would be able to understand in context but not produce it if asked to say “what’s this called”. Many wouldn’t know it at all.
I have a story about the word guichet. I am an Anglo Montrealer (which means I speak French) and I worked with this unilingual English Canadian from another province and they had to go out to the suburbs (Where no one speaks English) and were having trouble with her metro pass and couldn’t get help in English and was having an indignant “serve me” tantrum and they just laughed at her more. She was ranting at work that French is bullshit because she had previously learned that guichet is “bank machine”. Which it is. Because a bank machine is a service counter. But she couldn’t be less literal and understand them when in French they were saying she had to go back to the machine where you load money onto your metro card, also called a guichet. And she was like what bank machine, there’s no bank machine. I think they may have been pointing to ot and she was like wtf that’s not a guichet (bank machine) and it went on and on and we at work were supposed to sympathize that French is insane but I was like hmmm no one said it ONLY meant bank machine and she didn’t like me ever again.
@@M_SC I didn’t know “guichet” had also become “ATM” in Canadian French but again, you can see the logic because the old teller’s counter with the grill was exactly what it meant and therefore, by association, the machine that did the same thing too. Ditto the Metro machine - performing the same function that the ticket counter (“guichet”) did in previous days. I’m not sure about the metropolitan French words (a while since I lived there) but I’m pretty sure if you said “guichet automatique” for ATM, you’d be understood.
@@francesnustedt9036 You could always tease him by telling him it was the evidence that cricket was invented by the French. 😁
i'm 12 and i love linguistics, my native language is english and i'm studying german, i'm self taught and i want to learn more languages, this makes me happy because i don't really have anybody to talk about it or learn with😊
Another trick is to look for secondary English words to figure out the meaning. E.g. oublier=forget (oblivion), manger=eat (manger), lune=moon (lunar), dormir=sleep (dormitory) etc. Personally I find these especially fascinating.
I had French about 55 years ago and I can still pick out a fair amount of words. But your video made it so much simpler. I wish I had had a teacher like you.
Actually, the W was there before the GU. Typically, Germanic words (wer=war, win, wade, watch,...) and names (Walter/Wouter, Willelm, Wido...) came to be pronounced by Gallo-Romans with the W sound helped by a nonguttural G (more of a NG), in a sort of GW-. (Naturally written GU in Latin. Then they dropped the W sound -> ga-, go-, gui-, gue.) Hence Guerre, Gain, Gué, Guet ; Gautier, Guillaume, Guido -> Gui.
This is how we deduce that Guêpe came from the germanic Wasp and not from lat. Vespa, which would have given °Vêpe.
Also notice the relation between Gaul, gaulois, gallic, gaelic and the terms Walloon and Wales (which in French is Galles, Welsh is Gallois).
What have the romance academics got against the letter 'W'? In Spanish, the Royal Academy tells us to write 'whiskey' as 'güisqui'. This word not only has the offensive 'wh' combination, but a 'k' as well, so of course it has to be written in a way that no one has ever seen before. In effect, what they're saying is that their people are too stupid to read the word 'whiskey' without assistance. In English, we don't feel the need to transcribe 'gesundheit' and 'schadenfreude' into some weird thing. How come we never developed a royal academy to tell us how to write? If there is a standard in correct English, what is it? Rhetorical questions, but I'd like to get your take on W-hate and language academies.
@@groussac⋅ « In English, we don't feel the need » That's because English has a mostly etymological writing system (or writing tradition), in complete opposition with the Spanish writing norm which is essentially phonetic with a few exceptions. So yes, letters that are not used in the Spanish writing tradition will be difficultly tolerated.
« has to be written in a way that no one has ever seen before » There are people on this planet that don't even use the Latin alphabet, imagine! How will they dare to write whisky!? Ви́ски! Ουίσκι! ウイスキー! 威士忌! With your logic you should not have written whiskey but "uisce" or "uisge" since it's the original Gaelic word.
« How come we never developed a royal academy to tell us how to write? » The academy studies the language, analyses how it is evolving, and adapts its writing in order to maintain a coherence between letters and sounds. English orthography fossilized, & completely lost that sound-letter connexion it initially had.
« What have the romance academics got against the letter 'W' » It's not in their traditions to use it, it's seen as redundant, they already have "u" "hu" "gü" : uisqui ['ujski], huisqui ['u̯iski], güisqui ['ɣ̞wiski].
@@groussac UK/England uses the Oxford dictionary group as an un-official 'academy'...if a word is accepted into everyday use, these people include it in the new edition of the dictionary.
Unlike the "academie francais" which is very reactionary, the oxford system seems sometimes a bit too trendy-wendy.
@@loicrodriguez2532 ok, uisge is the shortened gaelic for whisKY, and would be acceptable in my mind.
You would still need to use whisKEY for the IRISH or the AMERICAN efforts at making the "water of life"...they are NOT interchangeable.
@@loicrodriguez2532 Disagree with your take on the role of the academy, but love the fact that you took the time to respond. We share the same alphabet. Through advertising and usage the word 'whiskey' (or 'whisky') is well known. No need to shoe horn it into strange orthography. Use the word as written. It becomes a miniature language lesson for Spanish speakers. Have a great day man. Gotta run...
Excellent. "Huître" is from a variant form of Old French "oistre", the h- was added artificially not to confuse with "vitre" (window), when u and v were both written V. The Norman form of William was Willame or Williame, with a sort of monophtongation in Williaume / Willaume, typical of the Northern Oil dialects. The surnames Willaume or Villaume still exist in France. In Northern Normandy w- turned to v- in the 12th-13th century : wiket, wiquet > viquet (English wicket, French guichet) ; wesp(e) > vêpe (English wasp, French guêpe).
I love every video you post. You are a wonderful teacher ❤