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!
Don’t care if this is very cherry-picked or not, I appreciate this kind of content.
I took French immersion and that was more useful than the 9 years spent. Thanks.
This is fascinating.
Thank You.
Oui, non. Ce sont les plus merdeuses "tricks". Mon chat est plus cleveur, et il est 17 annes d'age.