Do French speakers understand English texts and vice versa?

[Torsten]

As Alan described in his essay French of English, the English language contains so many French words. Now, do you think a native speaker of English could understand a text written in French even if they had never learned any French at school? Of course the answer depends on a variety of factors and I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.

Merci beaucoup,
Torsten
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Jamie (K)]

A native speaker of English with no French training cannot understand a text in even basic French, and the same goes for a native French speaker understanding English. The two languages may have many words in common -- about 60% of the English vocabulary, they say, and French has been borrowing English words for centuries -- but there is still the other 40% of the vocabulary and ALL the grammar to cause problems. Plus, all the most basic vocabulary is different. Native speakers of the two languages cannot understand the words for concepts as simple as "man", "woman", "dog", "street", "he", "she", "there is", "go", "wait" and thousands of others. Other words have been so phonologically transformed that they're not recognizable (Latin "scola" => English "school", but French "école"), or they have completely changed their meanings. A French verb that looks to an English speaker as if it means to take care of someone actually means in French to wait or expect.

English and German are both Germanic languages, with English having the older sound system. Can native English and German speakers understand texts in each other's languages without training? No.

[NinaZara]

[MrPedantic]

It would be interesting to run some tests on a few monoglottal English natives. I would hazard that they would do best with technical or abstract texts in French, Italian, Spanish, etc., but with simple texts in German and Scandinavian languages.

MrP

[Jamie (K)]

I agree that they would understand technical and abstract texts in Romance languages a tiny bit, but I can't agree that they would understand any kind of German or Scandinavian text. The common words in the other Germanic languages have been so transformed over the centuries that they are largely opaque to English speakers. It's even problematic with modern words. English speakers would understand the German word "Auto" as meaning a car, but the Swedes chose to shorten the word from the other end and call it a "bil". Anglophones would never figure that out. One English speaker I know saw the word "Mietwagen" and thought it meant an ambulance.

Face it:

Native English speakers can't understand a about half of Shakespeare without training.
They understand even less of Chaucer's Middle English.
They can't understand Old English at all, and that's almost like modern Scandinavian languages.
They can't understand French, Italian, Spanish or any Scandinavian languages.

[The_White_Paradise]

I am now studying on English lexicology in my university. And I also agree with Jamie (K), English has had a long process of development. It belongs to Indo-European family of language. Although it has borrowed many words from at first Latin, Celtic, Scandinavian, then, French, Greek, Italian, Spanish, German, India or Russian and some other groups, these borrowed words must go through changes when they are used more popular. Borrowed works are adjusted in three main area: the phonetic. the grammatical and the semantic. So, one English person who had never learnt French could not understand a French text.