How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)

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Don’t care if this is very cherry-picked or not, I appreciate this kind of content.

👍︎︎ 16 👤︎︎ u/NFL_MVP_Kevin_White 📅︎︎ Jul 31 2022 🗫︎ replies

I took French immersion and that was more useful than the 9 years spent. Thanks.

👍︎︎ 13 👤︎︎ u/qjkvla 📅︎︎ Jul 31 2022 🗫︎ replies

This is fascinating.

Thank You.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/Renshnard 📅︎︎ Jul 31 2022 🗫︎ replies

Oui, non. Ce sont les plus merdeuses "tricks". Mon chat est plus cleveur, et il est 17 annes d'age.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/diMario 📅︎︎ Jul 31 2022 🗫︎ replies
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I'm going to teach you how to read French  words without knowing any French. By the end   of this video a sentence like this, which  is gibberish to the untrained English eye,   will suddenly become readable. Sort of.  And you'll be able to throw this away! I said I wasn't going to do that. Being able to speak English equips you better for  understanding French words than you might realize.   That's because a large proportion of  the English vocabulary actually comes   from French. So I'm going to teach you three  tricks for tweaking the French words you see   to make them look more like the English  words that they're related to. Now,   if you've got no interest in reading French don't  turn off because the reasons why these tricks work   bring up some really interesting facts about the  English language. Trick number one: swapping E's for S's So just look at all of these French  nouns. They all start with an E with a little   accent on there. That's called an acute accent or  an accent aigu in French. But you don't actually   need to know that because I'm going to tell you,  when you see it, to get rid of it and replace it   with an S because suddenly all of these words  start to look a lot more like their English   equivalents. Let's take four really good  examples of this: the words épice a étranger   and éponge. Let's do our little switcheroo and  get rid of those É's and pop an S in instead. Look at that! They suddenly become the English  words that they're related to: spice, stranger,   spouse as in husband or wife, and   sponge. The French Spongebob  Squarepants is called Bob l'Éponge. It's not always that straightforward. Sometimes  when you swap the E and the S out you just get   an awful lot closer to the English word.  Take for example état, étudiant and école. They're actually the French words for state,  student and school. On other occasions you might   have to do a bit of verbal acrobatics to take  into account how the meanings of words change over   time. For example, take the French word écoute,  which comes from the verb écouter - to listen.   If we swap the E and the S, what we get is a  word that looks an awful lot like scout. Now,   the word scout nowadays means to search for  something, but it did used to mean to listen.   Another good example is this word.  That's the French name for a country.   Any guesses? Well what if we swap the E with an S? It's the french word for Scotland. Okay,  it's not that obvious but it looks more like   Scotland than any other country. And finally to  my favorite example while i was researching this.   It's this word, which i can never say properly.  That's why i asked the French lady who has the   misfortune of living with me how to say it. Écureuil. That's what i'm saying, ay-coo-roy. Na. Well whatever. Let's swap the E for an S and then read it out like it were an English word:  scu... scurry... scurreel... scurrel... squirrel!   It's the French word for squirrel. Now, let me  just explain to you why this trick works. The vast   majority of the French words in English came over  with William the Conqueror in 1066, who came from   Normandy in northern France. The French that he  brought was not the French we know today, but it   was a dialect of Old French and in Old French many  of these words were actually spelt with an ES at   the start not an É. Now, over the centuries since  then the French dropped the S because they stopped   pronouncing it. Whereas the English dropped the  E. Probably for the same reason. Disclaimer:   this trick does not always work. It works best  with what i would call old words. So that's words   that could realistically have been around when  William the Conqueror popped over to England   almost a thousand years ago. That's why it for  example does not work with the word électricité:   electricity in French. It also works best when the  E comes before certain consonants. For example:   a P, a C or a T. Trick number two: letters with hats. Just have a look at these French words. They're very varied in the ways that they're  spelt but they all have one thing in common. They   contain a vowel with this little chevron thing on  top. That's called a circumflex accent and unlike   other accents it doesn't actually change the  way that those letters are said. What it does   is tell us that a letter has been removed at some  point. It's there like a sort of spooky gravestone   showing you where a letter has been lost. In all  of these cases the letter that was once there   was an S. It came after the vowel with  the little hat. So when we put that S   back in, something magical happens. Let's take  a really good example: the French word forêt,   which i'm sure i'm saying terribly. So let's pop  an S in after the E with a hat. What do we get?   Forest. That's the French word for forest.  Let's try some more obvious ones. So,   hôpital. Let's stick an S in after the O with  a hat and you get - obviously - hospital.   Also stick an S in after the ô in hôtesse and you  get hostess... pretty much. You can also do the   same with the word hâte, which is the French word  for haste. And then there's hôtel... and you're   thinking "oh yeah, well that's an obvious one! we  just took that one directly as it is." Well yes we   did, but we actually took the word hostel before  we took the word hotel. It's one of those cases   where we've taken the word from French twice. Just  a couple of more... The French word tempête is   the French for storm or tempest. The French word  huître is a little bit more complicated, but if   we stick the S in there it does become a little  bit more like it's English equivalent: oyster.   Okay that one's a bit of a stretch. But then  let's bring it back with maître and maîtresse,   which are master and mistress. Sometimes, like  with trick number one, you do have to do some   verbal acrobatics. For example, this word will  be familiar to people who enjoy their wine.   You might see it on a bottle of Côte du Rhône.  That word means side, as in Côte du Rhône comes   from the side of the river Rhone. We have a  word for the side of the sea. It's "coast"   and it's it's spelt differently, but it's  the same word. I'm not just making that up,   they are related. The reason why this trick works  is very similar to why trick number one works.   It's because when these words entered English  from Old French the S's were there, but over the   centuries the French stopped pronouncing them  and then eventually in the 1700s the Academie   Francaise, which sort of regulates the French  language, got rid of the S's once and for all   and popped in these little accents just to show  us where they'd once been. So thanks for that.   Disclaimer time again: this again doesn't  always work but the hit rate is pretty good.   And finally, trick number three. Now this one  isn't really as useful as the other two to be   honest - it's a bit more niche. But I've had  to include it because I find it so satisfying.   Sometimes when we see a French word beginning  with GU we can swap that GU with a W and we get   much closer to the English word. For example, the  French name Guillaume is the French equivalent of   the English name William and the French words  guerre and guerrier are the French versions   of the English words war and warrior. That's cool  right? So why does that one work? Well once again   we have to go back to William the Conqueror... or  Guillaume le Conquérant... or alternatively again   Guillaume le Bâtard. I'll let you use trick number  two to work out what bâtard means. Anyway, the Old   French that William the Conqueror brought over was  just a dialect of Old French and it was different   to the dialect that was being spoken in Paris,  which eventually became the French that we know   today. Now, words that were being written in  Paris with a GU were being written in Normandy   with a W. That's because the Normans were really  Vikings at heart. Now, this difference makes for   an enormously satisfying English phenomenon.  Sometimes in English we have two words:   one beginning with a GU and one beginning  with a W that mean kind of the same thing.   Look at, for example, the words guardian and  warden and the words guarantee and warranty.   It's probably the case that in these  instances the W version of the word   came over with the Normans but the GU version was  imported into English much later from the Parisian   dialect. Anyway, let's get back to our little  trick. So look at this word here: guêpe.   Doesn't look like any English word I know. In  fact, even if we swap the GU for a W, we get   what? Weep? Well it doesn't mean weep...  but if we combine trick number three with   trick number two and stick an S after  that E with a hat, we get wespe. Yep. Guêoe is the French for wasp. Et voila! Those  are my three tricks for being able to read French   words without actually knowing any French. Now  let's go back to that nonsense sentence I showed   you at the start and see if we can make any  more sense of it now. So we've got the word   écureuil - is that how you say it? However you  say - at the start. We now know that that means   squirrel. After that we've got étudie. Swap  the É for an S and we know that that is now   studie... it means studies. Guillaume  we now know is William. Le guerrier?   The warrior. À means at. I'll give you that  one for free. l'école, which is the school.   Dans means in. I'll give you that one for free  as well. La forêt... stick an S after the E   and you get forest. "The squirrel  studies William the Warrior at the school   in the forest." Now it makes far more sense.  Thanks a lot for watching this video. I know   it's a fair bit longer than all of my other ones.  If you have got an aspect of the English language   that you'd like me to make a video about, do let  me know. Pop it in the comments below. I have   been reading them and a couple of the videos i've  made already have been inspired by those comments,   so keep them coming please. Give this video a like  and maybe share it. Perhaps with someone who needs   to brush up on their French. Also, subscribe to my  channel. It'd be lovely to get those numbers up.   Until next time... Au revoir!
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Channel: RobWords
Views: 543,363
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: French translation, read French, Language Facts, English, Learn English, History of English, Language, Etymology, Francais, Ecoute, Ecureuil pronounce, Guillaume William, William the Conqueror, Bob L'eponge, Spongebob
Id: 3BGaA3PC9tQ
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Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)
Published: Tue Nov 17 2020
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