How much an English speaker knows French without learning it

Shuimo   Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:39 am GMT
How much can an English-speaking person understand a French text without learning the French language?

Now Shuimo is embarking to teach myself French, I don't find much difficulty in understanding the French passages in the textbook I use, because I soon find many French words look rather familiar to me due to their close similarity/sameness with their English counterparts!
I haven't expected there to be such a great deal of vocabulary similarity btw French and English, though Capsian has warned me against this before!

e.g. pilote, economiste, professeur, parfum, guitare, papier, texte, banane, enveloppe, lettre,robe, radio, ticket, age,place, officier,famille, cinema,monument, peuple, inviter, visiter,habiter, refuser, accepter, excuser,marcher,indiquer,ancien,grand,telephoner,finir, en general....
too many English-looking French words to be listed here from the glossary in the lesson Shuimo has learned so far!

Doesn't this partly testify to Shuimo's theory that French and English are just dialects of one language?

I really wonder how much an English-speaking person who has never learned any French could understand a French text!
Guest   Tue Dec 15, 2009 5:24 pm GMT
The reason for the similarity is the English has borrowed a lot of words and phrases from French and French has also borrowed some things... It does not mean that they are dialects of the same language.
K. T. (not Tarzan)   Tue Dec 15, 2009 5:25 pm GMT
K. T. wonders why Shuimo switches between first person and third person.
Shuimo-worshipper   Tue Dec 15, 2009 5:27 pm GMT
The Great Shuimo is a Guru in the eyes of many an Antimooner.
Caspian   Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:13 pm GMT
Most English people start learning a basic amount of French from the age of 11. Before that, if you hand them a French text, they'll dismiss it as foreign without trying to understand any of it. Most people also continue to have this attitude after beginning to learn the language!

My sister is 10, and every so often I get her to read a text in French correcting her on her pronunciation: it's already better than most year 11 students' pronunciation (and that's not saying much to be honest). The reason for this is because French pronunciation is one of the main barriers that stop people from trying to learn the language effectively. By the time she starts secondary school she'll be able to pronounce French words fine, so she can concentrate on grammar rather than trying to work out why 'comprends' doesn't have a d or s sound in.

They're not actually dialects. They're not mutually intelligible - but granted, they're very closely related. But keep your theory, I enjoy seeing you backing it up! I'm looking forward to the day when you prove that Finnish and English are just dialects of one another!

An intelligent person familiar with language learning would probably understand a lot of French without learning it - but I don't know. The English language, primarily a Germanic language, has many words derived from French - almost half - because of the French and Roman invasions. Imagine how easy it is for a Catalan speaker to understand Spanish!
fr   Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:26 pm GMT
French and English *are* dialects of the same language--Indo-European. Also English borrowed many words from Norman French, as well as Latin (and French is derived from Latin). So, yes it is very easy for English speakers to read a scientific or technical work--even Wikipedia articles in French with very minimal study compared to most other languages. For example, after only one year of studying French, I can understand almost all of a Wikipedia article in French, versus very little of a German Wikipedia article (which I've studied for 3 years.)
Caspian   Wed Dec 16, 2009 8:54 am GMT
You should be able to understand a substantial amount after having studied it for three years, surely?

<< French and English *are* dialects of the same language--Indo-European. >>

No. They're languages belonging to the same language family. They're not dialects.
just an opinion   Wed Dec 16, 2009 9:12 am GMT
In my opinion French grammar is much more complex and confusing than the English one!
just me   Wed Dec 16, 2009 10:11 am GMT
English and French do not belong to the same group of languages!
They're both Indo-European languages but English is a germanic language while French is a romance one. Althought English shares lots of words with the main Romance languages, the pronunciation of these words is completely different and most of the times they 're not recognizable at all! However English is a typical germanic language, grammatically.
encore   Wed Dec 16, 2009 10:11 am GMT
<<How much can an English-speaking person understand a French text without learning the French language? >>
Some French and English words are the same:
La newsletter -a newsletter
La newsbar -a newsbar
Le speeder - a speeder
zoomin -zoomin
Le podcast - a podcast
Le cowboy -a cowboy
La star - a star
Les news -the news
Le web - a web
Le week-end -a weekend
Le wagon- a wagon
Franco   Wed Dec 16, 2009 10:15 am GMT
English and French do not belong to the same group of languages!
They're both Indo-European languages but English is a germanic language while French is a romance one. Althought English shares lots of words with the main Romance languages, the pronunciation of these words is completely different and most of the times they 're not recognizable at all! However English is a typical germanic language, grammatically.


French is a Latin-Germanic creole.
fraz   Wed Dec 16, 2009 2:08 pm GMT
<<Most English people start learning a basic amount of French from the age of 11. Before that, if you hand them a French text, they'll dismiss it as foreign without trying to understand any of it. Most people also continue to have this attitude after beginning to learn the language!>>

Interesting point. Many English speakers fall back on the excuse that they "are no good at languages" without even trying to get somewhere in the language.
observer   Wed Dec 16, 2009 6:26 pm GMT
" but granted, they're very closely related. "

Wrong. French and English are very far to be "closely related". They do not even belong to the same linguistic group. The only common points between french and English are the French words that have been borowded in English. outside of these words french and English are nothing alike. Compare romance languages together and you will understand what can mean being "closely related"!!

Some will say that those french words represent 50 of the English vocabulary... that might be tru that in the total amont of Enlgish words we can find 50% of words coming from french or latin; but in proportion of usual speech this is not much more than 5% to 15% (depending of the intellectual level of the speech). If we look at how these 5/15% of words are pronounced in the two languages, well they'll become completly ununderstandable.

a french speaker that read an average english text can understand about 10% of it at best; and he will miss the most important; (90%); the basic vocabulary (verbs, subjects, gramatical words), the gramatical system and the most basic objects... that are as ununderstandable as chinese or Russian. So saying that the languages are closely related is a good joke!
rules   Wed Dec 16, 2009 9:25 pm GMT
The limited similarity of English and French is somehow enhanced by the fact that both share a very rare feature among major IE languages: they are not mutually intelligible with any other.
Alessandro   Wed Dec 16, 2009 9:27 pm GMT
20/30%