| Differences Between French and English |
| Introduction to some of the key differences between French and English |
French and English are related languages in a sense, because French is a
Latin language with German and English influence, while English is a Germanic
language with Latin and French influence. Thus there are some similarities
between them,
most notably the same alphabet and a number
of true cognates. Perhaps more importantly,
however, there are a
number of differences, both major and minor, between French and English. Here are some brief explanations with links to
further information.
Comparison of characteristics
| French | English | |
| accents | in many words | rare; only in foreign words |
| agreement | yes | no |
| articles | more common | less common |
| capitalization | less common | more common |
| conjugations | different for each grammatical person | different only for third person singular |
| contractions | required | optional |
| gender | for all nouns and most pronouns | only for personal pronouns |
| liaisons | yes | no |
| negation | two words | one word |
| prepositions | certain verbs require prepositions | phrasal verbs |
| rhythm | stress at end of each rhythmic group | stressed syllable in each word, plus stress on important word |
| Roman numerals | more common, often ordinal | less common, rarely ordinal |
| subjunctive | common | extremely rare |
Other differences between French and English
| false cognates | Words that look alike don't necessarily mean the same thing. |
| pronunciation | Many differences, particularly vowels and the letter R. |
| punctuation + numbers | Different uses and spacing. |
| silent letters | Many in both, but not the same letters. |
| singulars and plurals | The grammatical number of nouns may be different. |
| spelling equivalents | Patterns in spelling differ in the two languages. |
| word order | Adjectives, adverbs, negation, + pronouns may cause problems. |
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