Essential French Grammar (2012)

Vocabulary Building with Cognates

When you study a foreign language, building a vocabulary is often one of the most difficult and laborious tasks. It can mean a great deal of tedious memorization and time-consuming study. Yet an English-speaker is in a fortunate position for learning foreign vocabulary, and his work can be considerably lightened. English is composite in origin, and in its word-trove are to be found thousands of forms that are borrowed from other languages. If you have already studied a foreign language, you probably remember the pleasure you felt when you came upon a word that was like its English counterpart; it immediately became easy to remember and use, since it was linked to something familiar, and it probably stayed in your memory longer than other words.

This word list is based upon a useful principle that until the present has not been widely used—the seeking out of vocabulary resemblances and making full use of them. It would seem to be obvious that the easiest way to obtain a French vocabulary would be to study words that English shares with French. Yet, surprisingly enough, until this present list, there has been no systematic compilation of the words that form the common ground between English and French.

This list contains more than twenty-five hundred French words, together with an equal number of English words that have the same meaning, and are either identical or very close in spelling to the French. Most of these English words have been borrowed from the French, in a long history of borrowings ranging from the Norman Conquest of England to the present day. A few, however, have come from Latin, or Italian, or one of the other Romance languages, and have parallel forms in modern French. Altogether, English shares an enormous part of its vocabulary with French. Estimates vary, but it is safe to say that well over half of the basic working vocabulary of English is represented by parallel forms in French.

The twenty-five hundred words in this list are the most frequently used words that English and French have in common parallel forms. They are all important words in French, all appearing among the top six thousand words in word-frequency counts. This list has been based upon a study of comparative cognates among English, French, and Spanish, submitted by William E. Johnson, Jr. as a master’s thesis to the George Peabody School for Teachers. The editors of Dover Publications have collated it with Helen S. Eaton’s Semantic Frequency List (published by Dover in 1961 as An English-French-German-Spanish Word Frequency Dictionary) and have enlarged it accordingly. While this list does not contain all the most common words in French (since there are many French words that do not have parallel English forms, especially in situations where we use forms derived from Anglo-Saxon), it will give you many of the words that you are likely to need, and will enable you to express your needs in the easiest way.

Do not go beyond the words in this list, however, in assuming that English and French words that look alike have the same meaning. There are many false analogies between the two languages, and it is not always safe to guess at French words because of their appearance. Many words which were once related in the past have since drifted apart in meaning, and in many other words there are simply chance resemblances between English and French. The French word chair, for example, does not mean chair, but flesh or meat; the comparable French form to chair is chaise.

If you concentrate on the words of this listing, you will find that you will be able to comprehend a good deal of French, and will be able to express your thoughts with a minimum of memorization. Learn to recast your thoughts in these words when you speak. Instead of thinking (in English) of big and great, think of grand which is close to French grand; instead of thinking of let, think of permit. Each of these words has its near equivalent in French, and you will be able to express yourself without ambiguities or misstatements.

Use whatever methods come easiest to you for learning these words. Some language experts advise you simply to read through the list two or three times a day for several weeks, and then to let your mind pick up words unconsciously. The association between English and French in this list is so close, that simply reading and rereading the list will enlarge your vocabulary by hundreds of useful words. Some teachers recommend that you memorize a certain number of words each day, perhaps making sentences with them. There are not many short cuts to learning and study, and this list is one of the few that are of value. Do not be afraid of making mistakes. You may be unidiomatic at times; you may be grammatically incorrect occasionally, but you will probably be understood.