Getting deeper into French, for an English speaker, is a rich journey. I knew of the notion of false friends, but I had dimly imagined this was a universal effect to be found between any two languages. But no, the relationship of French and English is special.

First let me record a few false friends I hadn’t noticed before this year. I love the way navigation means sailing, and clairvoyant means seeing clearly, and a comedien is an actor, and apprecier means to assess, and sanitaire means health-related, and acquiescer means to agree. All like the English, yet not.

And let me mention some of the sunny surprises, discoveries that THAT’s where a certain English word came from! Today’s Le Monde reports a couvre-feu — a curfew. The participle aisé is a French word for easy. Represailles gives us reprisals, and effrayé afraid, and ennuyé annoyed, and nuisé noisy. A tailleur is one who cuts and measures, a tailor, and a pair is an equal, a peer, and farouche turns into ferocious. The word dûment puzzled me until I realized that ment here is just the adverbial suffix as usual and can be translated into “ly”. And in a biography of Napoleon I got a kick out of a general who had to se rendre. Surrender!

[15 September 2018]