Are these languages really similar?

In semantics, the lexical similarity is an evaluation of the degree to which the word sets of two different languages(given for testing) are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlay in the middle of vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. Using such a method, an estimation was made regarding the lexical similarity of English was evaluated to have a lexical similarity of 57% with Spanish, 60% with German, and 27% with French. Lexical similarity is always used to evaluate the degree or estimation of genetic relationships between two languages. According to this relationship, the lexical similarity of two languages is higher than 85% usually indicates that those languages are likely to be related dialects. 

 

The French and English languages are related in perception because French is a Romance(from the Indo-European family) language descended from Latin with German and English influences, while English(West-Germanic) is a Germanic language with Latin and French influences, and in the way, they share a portion of similarities, most notably the same alphabet structure and a number of true relations.

Why there are many resemblances that exist between English and French, the reason is French is the most common source of borrowed words in English and vice versa, and this statement requires a brief historical detour. The close geographical and cultural contract between France and England was the main reason behind the mixing up of the cultural and linguistic factors as well as the real things that happened when William the Conqueror became the King of England. During his reign, Norman French became the official language of government, the church, and the upper classes in general in England. This practice was in effect and was the state of affairs for about 300 years. Thousands of French words were made it to the English language and most of these are still in use today. 

 

A 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
conjugation	Different for each person in grammatical responses	Different in case of 3rd person singular
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 the end of each rhythmic group	stressed syllable in each word, along with stress on an important word
Roman numerals	more common, often ordinal	less common, rarely ordinal
subjunctive	common	rare

 

Other main differences between French and English

False cognates	Words that look alike but don’t mean the same thing
Pronunciation	Many differences are there, the letter R and vowels
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.
Spellings and equivalents	Patterns in spelling differ in two languages.
Word order	Adverbs, adjectives, and negation plus pronouns may cause problems.

 

Collection of commonly used French words and expressions used in English

1. Avant-garde – a military term for vanguard
2. Carte Blanche – usually meaning granting unlimited authority
3. Cliché – The term used to refer to a printer’s block used to reproduce type, now stereotype
4. Crème de la crème – the cream of the cream’. A sophisticated, classy synonym.
5. déjà vu –  already seen,(a feeling of).
6. sauté – jumped, from the verb ‘sauter’ (to jump). It is used either as an adjective or a noun.
7. Et voilà! – see there, in French, it is used to announce something is completed or done with success, with a feeling of satisfaction or pride, in front of others.