UPCT - Linguistics: Why are French and English so similar?

📖 This week we'll be talking about the resemblance between the French and the English language (subtitles are available in French and English by clicking on the CC button on the KZbin control bar), why so many words are so similar, going back more than a thousand years in the past.
🇫🇷 If you enjoyed this episode, please consider:
- supporting on / frenchconversationgroup or anchor.fm/frenchconversationg...
- subscribe and share
ℹ️ French Conversation Group meets weekly in Los Angeles, New York or online. It's meant for non native speakers (beginners, intermediate, advanced) to practice their French and have fun. You're more than welcome to join! Check out this link for more info: www.frenchconversationgroup.com

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Ever wondered who rules the French language? Check out the episode about the Académie française: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4O4aGhjqsuWqcU

[@urseliusurgel4365]

English has many 'doublet' words with similar, but not exactly the same, meaning, one derived from Anglo-Saxon, the other from Norman French. As examples you can 'start' (A-S) or 'commence' (Fr) and you can 'end' (A-S) or 'finish' (Fr). It is one of the reasons why English has such a large vocabulary.

[@mlml8018]

Finish from finite? Terminate is a more obvious example

[@urseliusurgel4365]

@@mlml8018 Finish is from the Norman French equivalent of the Modern French 'finis', meaning end. Sometimes seen at the end of old films (movies) and old books.

[@valerietaylor9615]

“ Finis” is Latin. The modern French word for end is “ fin”.

[@urseliusurgel4365]

@@valerietaylor9615 Finis de te plaindre! It still exists in some Modern French constructions, but if you look closely I was talking about Norman French. Modern English has very many words derived from Medieval Norman French, but comparatively few from Modern French.

[@anothervinnie7413]

Terminé et finis are both ok

[@paulhorn27]

The more I learn French, the more similar the two languages seem.

[@mlml8018]

And the more confusing it gets sometimes haha. Throw in Spanish and you start mixing words and sounds and grammar ensemble

[@IsaacBenjaminGrey]

A really old French word in English that people don’t often realise came from French is “squirrel” because it’s so changed from the modern French “écureuil”. Both words came from the Old French “escurueil” but modern French dropped the s and kept the e and modern English did the complete opposite dropping the e and keeping the s, add to that the silent final L in French and the pronounced L in English and you have two completely different sounding words that are in fact the SAME. Dun dun duuuuun👍😀

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

I didn’t know that, thanks! Turns out squirrels are part of the family of "sciuridés" in French (which has the same root as "écureuil" but starts with a S...). Languages evolve in such interesting ways.

[@harrynewiss4630]

The Germanic word aquerne was used for this in English into the middle ages. It still is in a few dialects.

[@brittdrouet1668]

Très intéressant. Merci pour la leçon d'histoire!

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Avec plaisir, Britt! Le sujet est fascinant et pourrait être développé pendant des heures.

[@londonanderson9622]

Oui lol as an Native English speaker from America I totally understood that comment 😂. A perfect example of how the video’s history lesson is still in affect today

[@adrianjaramillo3252]

Superbe vidéo, merci de vous exprimer très clairement (jsuis que B2 en français)

[@matildawolfram4687]

Good video! Thanks to the author for his good work! I'd like to recommend Yuri Ivantsiv's practice book Polyglot's Notes: Practical Tips for Learning a Foreign Language. This book has many useful methods for learning a foreign language, how to develop your memory, how to memorize words, learn grammar, quickly learn to speak, read and write. All recommend this excellent book! Good luck to everyone in learning a foreign language!

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Thanks for sharing!

[@tombartram6842]

In English we don't don't say Mer, terre, lune, soleil. But we DO say Marine, terrestrial, lunar, solar. There are dozens of examples of French-derived adjectives we use without using the noun on which they are based. Does anyone know why????

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

It all goes back to the Norman invasion in 1066, and consequently how english finds its roots in germanic languages as well as romance languages. Why the adjectives and not the nouns is an excellent question. I'm currently reading this amazing book www.tallandier.com/livre/la-story-de-la-langue-francaise/ which I hope will answer that question.

[@tombartram6842]

@@FrenchConversationGroup Sigh...I did French as a minor in uni and asked this question to a PhD holder in the dept. Apart from praising the question he too was unable to answer. And so the mystery goes on and on and ...

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

There must be a reason for it somewhere. I'll ask around and keep my ears open, hopefully we'll have an answer sooner than later.

[@davidpaterson2309]

I think those derivations are more likely to be Latin. In the Middle Ages, and later in many countries, scientific, geographic etc texts were written almost entirely in Latin - which was the universally understood language of scholarship and of anyone with a higher level education in the whole of Europe. It’s actually not that long ago that the ability to read and write Latin was still considered an essential qualification for a university education nearly everywhere in Europe - well into the 20th c in many countries. Mare, Terra, Luna, Solis

[@harrynewiss4630]

Those are borrowings from Latin, not French.

[@davidpaterson2309]

Re the overlay of Norman French onto Anglo Saxon. This famously produced the different words for meats and the animals they came from - allegedly because the French speaking nobility ate the meat and the Anglo-Saxon speaking peasantry tended the animals. Pork - Pig, boar Beef - Ox, Bull, cow Mutton - Sheep, lamb Veal - calf

[@Aditya-te7oo]

1:22 In English he's called William the Conqueror not William the Bastard. 😂😂

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Actually both. "William I (c. 1028 - 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard,..." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror I admit that I thought the Bastard was more fun than the Conqueror, that was a useless raillery, lol.

[@Aditya-te7oo]

@@FrenchConversationGroup Ok. 😂😂

[@urseliusurgel4365]

@@FrenchConversationGroup He was a little touchy about his illegitimate birth. He was besieging a town or castle and the defenders beat dried cowhides on the battlements, shouting that they needed a tanner to tan them. William's mother was the daughter of a tanner from Falaise. When he took the place, William had all the surviving defenders killed out of hand.

[@danielt.9101]

Ah yes, good old Billy the Conq.

[@frigginjerk]

I bet it depends on whether the English want to claim him as one of their monarchs or not. It seems they usually do, so it probably makes them look a little better to have The Conqueror as their king, as opposed having lost a war to some ol' bastard.

[@WizzardJC]

Merci por la video mon ami, c’est tre Bon! I hope that is right, my father’s ancestors were French and I learnt some in school but I forgot quite a lot haha aurevoir

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

🙏

[@nexialistmen2159]

Even French has some germanic influences from the Franks and Gauls, take for example the verbs "danser" and "haïr" which are the German equivalents of tanzen and hassen. Not to mention that French, unlike other similar languages, is the only romance language that always glues the pronoun and the auxiliary verb (Je+etre or avoir), just as the germanic languages having to always use a verb next to the pronoun.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Absolutely true. It would be wrong to limit a language to a single origin. There so many influences, old and new, from Germanic, Celtic, to Arabic languages, etc.

[@winderwonder]

There is the English-French creole theory that asserts that English went through a partial creolisation.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Interesting, I'll definitely look into that. Thanks!

[@talideon]

The creolisation of English was triggered much earlier though, due to contact with Viking settlers. English, however, isn't a creole, but a creolised language. There are other examples of languages that went through the same process, such as Afrikaans, which started life as a creolisation of Dutch.

[@winderwonder]

@@talideon I’m speaking strictly of the French influence on English, thank you.

[@harrynewiss4630]

And it's wrong. English is not a creole, any more than Dutch or Danish are - both of which have borrowed vocabulary extensively.

[@winderwonder]

@@harrynewiss4630 English has more than borrowed. It’s not entirely wrong. It more than likely went through a partial creolisation.

[@thejoin4687]

One of my favourite anglicisms is "smoking" (for the English "tuxedo")

[@urseliusurgel4365]

In the UK it is called a 'dinner jacket'. The 'smoking jacket' existed in the UK, but was not identical to the dinner jacket.

[@frigginjerk]

I believe Spanish has the same thing-- a tuxedo is "un esmoquín."

[@brookeking8559]

3:34 LOL! This has been happening a long time. I recall in the 1970’s when French traditionalists bemoaned that “le jumbo jet,” “la bird sexy,” and other terms derived from English gained popular use in French.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

C'est cool :D

[@brookeking8559]

@@FrenchConversationGroup oui, très cool. :D

[@chigeh]

I'm interested in the part around 3:10 to 3:30. French has some "lacunes" in the technical, political and commercial domain. Does this mean that some terms where missing in french and had to be described in inefficient ways? After this it is stated that French remains the dominant language in diplomacy but looses it's positions in other fields during industrialization. I am curious to which other languages over take French in these fields. I have a hunch that English became dominant in Engineering, and that German was a dominant language in science (until the 1950's).

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

I suppose one big advantage of English was also the number of English-speakers around the world, which includes the US and most of the Commonwealth. Probably enough to take over Western diplomacy.

[@dagobert54]

Moi, j'adore l'accent anglais en français. Petula Clark, Jane Birkin...Quand je vivais en Angleterre, il y a un demi-siècle!, j'ai trouvé l'anglais très facile. La grammaire est hyper simple et le vocabulaire similaire, à part les 1000 premiers mots basiques germaniques, surtout les verbes à particules, put up with, look down on, get (something) through to (someone), tell off, sink in, take (a story) up, look after (someone)... qu'il faut vraiment maîtriser pour bien comprendre l'anglais idiomatique. Pour augmenter mon vocabulaire, à l'époque, j'ai lu énormément de romans de gare, où le registre de langue est très proche de l'anglais naturel de la rue et des comedies de la télé et puis surtout, je n'ai fréquenté que des Britanniques monoglottes (il y en avait encore beaucoup de mon temps). Pas d'autre choix que de progresser.

[@marcgardner9865]

The French helped the United States win our independence from Britain. I’m forever grateful to the French.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

That would be a great topic to cover in the future!

[@winderwonder]

Then we threw the monarchy under the bus and didn’t assist them with the French Revolution.

[@joselugo4536]

Marc, what about the Spaniards? Do you feel grateful too? Hint: Bernardo de Gálvez.

[@Jimmy-jm1ol]

I'm American, and wouldn't mind being British at this moment!

[@joselugo4536]

@@Jimmy-jm1ol I hope you enjoy also the same hardships the non-wealthy British suffer under Brexit. Hint, more costly commodities.

[@Mcgoohan6]

Yes very similar(similaire) language( langage) ! two word uniquely (uniquement) in a sentense !

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Haha well done! Only that last word of your comment would fall into the "false friends" category: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hmfKXoGdht-HftU

[@cobra7397]

une chose est sur les principaux mot qui se finissent en "ie" en français sont souvent fini en "y" en anglais et en "ies" aux pluriel en anglais il y a des tone d'exemple. Le "S" en anglais dans certain mot sont remplacé par l'accent circonflex "^" en français comme dans " hôpital" qui donne en anglais "hospital" c'est le mot le plus connu pour illustrer cet exemple.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Tout à fait. C’est amusant que tu parles du mot “hôpital”, c’était aussi mon choix pour illustrer les changements de graphie de l’Académie française dans cette vidéo: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4O4aGhjqsuWqcU

[@lewuy8214]

Hi I speak spanish I've been learning English for years today I decided to learn French. also spanish and french have similar grammar, french is a historical lenguaje.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Very true, Spanish and French have a lot in common!

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Check out this week's episode (Sept 6 2021) about frenglish, or should I say the real frenglish! Words gone from French to English, back to French 🎾 kzbin.info/www/bejne/q6XLg62kptB7gNU

[@mikedl1105]

A thousand years of history will do that

[@DavidChrisCastillo-im1wg]

J'amie beaucoup.

[@joshuddin897]

Good pour toi😅

[@smith6903]

Castle et knife ont des origines françaises il me semble, alors qu'ils font très anglais Chasteau (pronnoncé casto) -> Castle Canif -> knife là c'est de l'étymologique

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Bonne remarque! Le mot anglais "castle" vient du latin "castrum" = fortification. Il y a eu un passage soit du latin vers l'anglais entre le 7ème et le 11ème siècle, soit du français à l'anglais aux environs du 12/13ème siècle. Par contre le mot "knife" semble avoir une origine commune entre le francique (knif), le germanique (knībaz), le nordique (knífr) et l'anglo-saxon (cnīf). Le passage a dû être antérieur, dans les langages indo-européens.

[@smith6903]

@@FrenchConversationGroup j'ai du voir de mauvaises informations alors 😅

[@mehdila9521]

@@smith6903 alors on va concluser que la langue anglaise n'est pas une langue sans la langue française?

[@smith6903]

@@mehdila9521 bah... non, juste qu'ils ont des apports français très vieux et parfois inattendu

[@mehdila9521]

@@smith6903 oui mais la langue français a 29% de vocabulaires dans le lexique anglais(1/3) alors est très très importante.

[@useryooo]

Il y a beaucoup de mots similaires dans ces deux langues

[@princesarubio9295]

A mon avis, l'anglais et le français ne sont pas trop pareils, les deux ont ces différances. Qu'est-ce que vous pensez? Bisoux d'une fille espagnole qui est en train d'apprendre la langue de l'amour😊😊

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Ces deux langues sont très différentes aujourd’hui, mais il est fascinant de voir qu’elles ont autant d’origines communes. Les histoires de France et d’Angleterre ont été très entremêlées ce dernier millénaire. :)

[@princesarubio9295]

@@FrenchConversationGroup vrai

[@dennis771]

People say Chinese, Arabic, Spanish or Hindi but I say 200 years from now only English & French will matter on earth.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Watch this hilarious video about French vs. English: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iGKuZmOCgc6Mjq8

[@Enigma19]

William le batard! ahahaha. I love French

[@stephanedumas8329]

Pour moi l'anglais est beaucoup plus similaire au frisian ou de l'allemand que du français

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Absolument, ça reste une langue germanique avant tout.

[@tubedude4859]

English is the worlds best language

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

It's certainly a marvelous language!

[@paulhorn27]

How is it that you have come to that conclusion?

[@Sungawakan]

Friend is of Germanic origin, enemy is French. That is all you have to know. 😎

[@computerager]

Let's be amicable here! ;-)

[@Sungawakan]

@@computerager Friendly…

[@anothervinnie7413]

And asshole is of which origin? 😏

[@tereseshaw7650]

1066.

[@MrTonoss]

Il y a plus de mots français dans la langue anglais, que l'invers.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Pour l'instant!... :)

[@Hrng270]

The British and franco-British archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology at Cambridge and Oxford have already confirmed the English we speak today, is now Romanesque based and descends from Norman and anglo Norman and then from Parisian and anglo Parisian later, they have proved this by the cemeteries of Richard the Lionheart in England as well as in Norman churches, bookshops and libraries in medieval England. The grammatical and linguistic rules of English are an adaptation and regionalization of the linguistic and grammatical rules of French. There is no more controversy in this, the false dichotomous has been kesno still in sectors of education and the Anglophone magisterium that still insist on the kito and the lie of the germanicity of English, something that 5 years ago British archeology has already destroyed years, half a decade already.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Fascinating, thanks for that!

[@andreafalconiero9089]

@@FrenchConversationGroup maybe "fascinating", but also complete nonsense. Anyone who is rational and well-informed about history and/or linguistics knows that English is at its core a Germanic language, and how it came to have a lot of Old Norman French vocabulary is no great secret. You shouldn't take a bizarre fringe theory like this very seriously, since it is contradicted by a mountain of evidence.

[@galinor7]

Here we go again. The Francification of England. Let's start with the obvious. England isn't the UK. It is only one part of the UK. We Are talking about the English language as coming from a group of people and not the UK in general as in the nation. The flag used is not the English flag and never will it be. It is the UK flag and doesn't necessarily represent the English but rather Everyone on the islands, many of wo ARE NOT ENGLISH. France recognises only one language French. The UK has Welsh as an obligatory language in Wales. Scott Gaelic is being taughed in Scotland in more and more Schools and Cornish and Manx have found their way back into the class room. All of which has the backing of the UK government. This England is the UK and we are just different types os English is wrong.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Hi Rich, you're right pointing out that the flag used in this video isn't the English flag but the UK one. In the video, I am talking about England as a country, where William the Conqueror became the monarch in 1066. I did indeed use the UK flag to represent the language as it is visually more broadly recognized. A simple google search shows that the English language is commonly represented by the Union Jack or the US flag. The proper English flag would not have had the same impact. But that being said, I totally agree it doesn't make it right :)

[@harrynewiss4630]

This topic is poorly understood, as a rule. The 'French' influence on English has come via several routes - 1. Borrowings after the Norman conquest. BUT these were actually quite limited in number. Read middle English texts over the next two centuries and you will find relatively few French loan words in most dialects. 2. Borrowings from other dialects of French in the later middle ages. These are more numerous and start to show up in eg Chaucer's writing in the 14th century. Note some of the medieval borrowings from French dialects are words with a Germanic root too e.g. 'guard' cognate with 'ward'. 3. Latin borrowings especially from the 17th century on, largely connected with scientific etc vocabulary. Eg 'terrestrial' but we don't use 'terre'. 4. Going way back, English and French are part of the same language family, the indo-European group. Grammatical changes. If you study late Old English and early Middle English you can see a process of grammatical change, notably a shift from synthetic to analytic structures (fewer endings, more use of prepositions, more rigid word order). This is sometimes claimed to be the result of the Norman takeover but actually the process was well under way before that, albeit disguised a bit by the conservative written West Saxon standard. Norse influence may have accelerated it to an extent, BUT it's worth noting that this kind of grammatical change is also visible in the Scandinavian languages themselves, and Old French. So changes in English may have been more related to that broader process. There are some grammatical influences from French on modern English like borrowing the ending 'ment' and using it to coin new words....but the grammatical influence of French is often overstated, being confused with other processes. A key result from all this is that the core of modern English is still overwhelmingly Germanic. This means English and French are not mutually intelligible at all. A monoglot French speaker may recognise certain words in an English sentence but with the key pronouns, prepositions and every day nouns being largely unfamiliar, they will have no idea what the sentence means. By contrast an English speaker might guess the meaning of quite a lot of everyday words and even occasionally a whole short sentence in other continental languages (e.g. 'Kom hier' in Dutch, 'Giv mig det' in Danish). But would be baffled by any kind of complex conversation.

[@FrenchConversationGroup]

Great insight, thanks Harry!

[@skyalmillegra2532]

French and English so similar?? haha.

[@samdumond6501]

il ya 1/3 des mots français dans la langue Anglaise

[@flamma9034]

similar to write, not to talk ^^

[@galinor7]

English has a massive amount of French vocabulary in it but despite many common words a large amount of the French crammed into English is historical and no longer used. Apparently 99 out of the 100 most commonly used English words have a Germanic root.