Do French speakers understand English texts and vice versa?

[makki.knotch@gmail.com]

It cannot be done. A native English speaker could not understand the first word in a text written in French if he had never learned the French Language. It's a totally impossible feat.

[Minnie]

Dear Alan,
Reading your essay is so wonderful! It makes me feel like talking with native speakers. I can understand 100% what you write in the essay. As a Chinese, I think learning languages needs to do more training, the more the better. I don't think a native speaker of English could understand a French text without learning any French at all. One thing is for sure, the English speakers may learn French easier than the Chinese do.
Thanks,
Minnie

[Cesar Lopez Petrovich]

Hi, Alan!
It was a very interesting article.
I really appreciate the way you give us real useful information about English language.
Thanks a lot!

Faithfully yours,

Cesar Lopez Petrovich.

[Catreena_Uae]

Hello,

I think this article give me more motivation to strength my English and study French which I started to learn one year ago and unfortunately stopped. I am not sure if the native speaker of English language may face difficulties in learning French or vice versa. That's because as Mr. Alan said they have similar roots. From my experience, the common features between the two languages have made my French class easier. However, the only problem I faced in learning French is the pronunciations. It doesn't mean English native speaker can totally understand a text written in French. Training is very important in learning any language not only the mentioned ones.

Many thanks,

Meera.

[Sepideh.manutd]

I've been living in France for more than eleven years. From the experience I have with my French friends, I can say that they hardly understand an English text (of course, the level of understanding highly depends on the number of common words in both English and French in the given text). But this similarity of words may sometimes be misleading; since there are many word with the same form and spelling in English and French, but either their meanings or their usage and application are different.

[S. Becker]

Nice article and I did notice the difference in meaning between demander (meaning to ask) in Fr. and demand (more bossy meaning than to ask) in Eng.
There are many infinitive verbs in French, which one can decode if reading from an English perspective, but once grammar comes into play, French cannot be read by an English-speaker without previous knowledge of how the grammar works.

[Jan]

Latin words in Eurpe countries ,even with same written form could have different meaning .
In Europe countries still a lot has its roots from Rome times, it could be the help and it could be as well the main source of confusion. I notice that Polish words with Latin roots have a lot of times closer meaning to French than to English.

Comunication between French and English would vary a lot from individuals
It depends a lot from personal skills , understanding could be a matter of inteligence.
Step by step you would have to come closer to artificial language as Esperanto if you really like to improve basic international comunication.
Nationalism is a common enemy for future peace and prosperity,pressing on developing one National language as main comunnication tool is a mistake, I hope that the Esperanto will
be the most important contribution of West culture to the world population which will help to wipe out the shame of socializm spread unfortunatly by Europe in the last centuary.

[Zura]

Very helpful history. Thanks Alan.
Zura

[Cornuelle]

reading english is "relatively "easy for a french native speaker.The problem is pronunciation

[Alexandranow]

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[Vilmos]

What is the English equivalent for encore?

[Happytofita]

[Zezo2009]

Thanks for this useful lesson. I have a comment. I think there is a punctuation error in the sentence:
Well, Alan Townend whose essay you are just reading, has created ..........
I think there is amissing comma after Alan must be added to give an indefinite relative cluse
The correction:
Well, Alan, Townend whose essay you are just reading, has created

Waiting for your review and comments
Zuhair Ghayadah

[Qq]

ASLAMU ALIKUM
PEACE BE UPON YOU EVRY BODY
really it is agood topic to increase our knowldge about English
As i have studied in my collage that there is many influences on English language. But the greatest influence was the French influence on the Vocabulary like Close-shut ,Annual-Yearly , and many other words . And also, the Latin influence . French became the language of government and law and Latin became the language of the Church . I think it is good thing these influnces of languages on each other , and very useful ''espiceally in E and F'' be cause I allways hear that if you can speak good english you can understand Fench. That what I heard .
corrcect me pleaseTHANK YOU Alan
May ALLAH be with you....

[Torsten]

Hello Qq,

Thanks a lot for your post. You can improve your English instantly if you decide to start using a spell checker. Do you know what that is?

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