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	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 and informal
gender	for all nouns and most pronouns	only for personal pronouns
liaisons	yes	no
negation	two words	one word
prepositions	certain verbs require prepositions	many 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	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.