How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)

I'm going to teach you how to read French words without knowing any French. By the end of this video, a sentence like this, which is gibberish to the untrained English eye, will suddenly become readable. Sort of. And you'll be able to throw this away. Oh, I said I wasn't going to do that. Being able to speak English equips you better for understanding French words than you might realise. That's because a large proportion of the English vocabulary actually comes from French. So I'm going to teach you three tricks for tweaking the French words you see to make them look more like the English words that they're related to. Now, if you've got no interest in reading French, don't turn off because the reasons why these tricks work bring up some really interesting facts about the English language. Trick number one, swapping E's for S's. So just look at all of these French nouns. They all start with an E with a little accent on there. That's called an acute accent or an accent aigu in French. But you don't actually need to know that because I'm going to tell you when you see it to get rid of it and replace it with an S. Because suddenly all of these words start to look a lot more like their English equivalents. Let's take four really good examples of this. The words épice, étranger, épouse and éponge. Let's do our little switcheroo and get rid of those E's and pop an S in instead. Look at that. They suddenly become the English words that they're related to. Spice, stranger, spouse as in husband or wife and sponge. The French SpongeBob SquarePants is called Bob l'éponge. It's not always that straightforward. Sometimes when you swap the E and the S out, you just get an awful lot closer to the English word. Take for example état, étudiant and école. They're actually the French words for state, student and school. On other occasions, you might have to do a bit of verbal acrobatics to take into account how the meanings of words change over time. For example, take the French word écoute which comes from the verb écouter, to listen. If we swap the E and the S, what we get is a word that looks an awful lot like scout. Now the word scout nowadays means to search for something, but it did used to mean to listen. Another good example is this word. That's the French name for a country. Any guesses? Well, what if we swap the E with an S? It's the French word for Scotland. Okay, it's not that obvious, but it looks more like Scotland than any other country. And finally, to my favourite example while I was researching this. It's this word which I can never say properly. That's why I asked the French lady who has the misfortune of living with me how to say it. That's what I'm saying. Well, whatever. Let's swap the E for an S and then read it out like it were an English word. It's the French word for squirrel. Now let me just explain to you why this trick works. The vast majority of the French words in English came over with William the Conqueror in 1066, who came from Normandy in northern France. The French that he brought was not the French we know today, but it was a dialect of Old French. And in Old French, many of these words were actually spelt with an E S at the start, not an E accent aigu. Now over the centuries since then, the French dropped the S because they stopped pronouncing it, whereas the English dropped the E, probably for the same reason. Disclaimer, this trick does not always work. It works best with what I would call old words. So that's words that could realistically have been around when William the Conqueror popped over to England almost a thousand years ago. That's why it, for example, does not work with the word électricité, electricity in French. It also works best when the E comes before certain consonants. For example, a P, a C or a T. Trick number two, letters with hats. Just have a look at these French words. They're very varied in the ways that they're spelt, but they all have one thing in common. They contain a vowel with this little chevron thing on top. That's called a circumflex accent. And unlike other accents, it doesn't actually change the way that those letters are said. What it does is tell us that a letter has been removed at some point. It's there like a sort of spooky gravestone showing you where a letter has been lost. In all of these cases, the letter that was once there was an S. It came after the vowel with the little hat. So when we put that S back in, something magical happens. Let's take a really good example. The French word forêt, which I'm sure I'm saying terribly. So let's pop an S in after the E with a hat. What do we get? Forest. That's the French word for forest. Let's try some more obvious ones. So, hôpital. Let's stick an S in after the O with a hat. And you get, obviously, hospital. Also, stick an S in after the O in hôtess. And you get hostess, pretty much. You can also do the same with the word at, which is the French word for haste. And then there's hôtel. And you're thinking, oh yeah, well that's an obvious one. We just took that one directly as it is. Well, yes, we did. But we actually took the word hostel before we took the word hôtel. It's one of those cases where we've taken the word from French twice. Just a couple of more. The French word tempête is the French for storm or tempest. The French word huitre is a little bit more complicated. But if we stick the S in there, it does become a little bit more like its English equivalent. Oyster. Okay, that one's a bit of a stretch. But then let's bring it back with maître and maîtresse, which are master and mistress. Sometimes, like with trick number one, you do have to do some verbal acrobatics. For example, this word will be familiar to people who enjoy their wine. You might see it on a bottle of Côte du Rhône. That word means side, as in Côte du Rhône comes from the side of the river Rome. We have a word for the side of the sea. It's coast. And it's spelt differently, but it's the same word. I'm not just making that up. They are related. The reason why this trick works is very similar to why trick number one works. It's because when these words entered English from Old French, the Ss were there. But over the centuries, the French stopped pronouncing them. And then eventually in the 1700s, the Académie Française, which sort of regulates the French language, got rid of the Ss once and for all and popped in these little accents just to show us where they'd once been. So thanks for that. Disclaimer time again. This, again, doesn't always work, but the hit rate is pretty good. And finally, trick number three. Now this one isn't really as useful as the other two, to be honest. It's a bit more niche, but I've had to include it because I find it so satisfying. Sometimes when we see a French word beginning with G-U, we can swap that G-U with a W and we get much closer to the English word. For example, the French name Guillaume is the French equivalent of the English name William. And the French words guerre and guerrier are the French versions of the English words war and warrior. That's cool, right? So why does that one work? But once again, we have to go back to William the Conqueror or Guillaume le Conquerant or alternatively, again, Guillaume le Batard. I'll let you use trick number two to work out what batard means. Anyway, the old French that William the Conqueror brought over was just a dialect of old French. And it was different to the dialect that was being spoken in Paris, which eventually became the French that we know today. Now, words that were being written in Paris with a G-U were being written in Normandy with a W. That's because the Normans were really Vikings at heart. Now, this difference makes for an enormously satisfying English phenomenon. Sometimes in English, we have two words, one beginning with a G-U and one beginning with a W that mean kind of the same thing. Look at, for example, the words guardian and warden and the words guarantee and warranty. It's probably the case that in these instances, the W version of the word came over with the Normans, but the G-U version was imported into English much later from the Parisian dialect. Anyway, let's get back to our little trick. So look at this word here. Gep doesn't look like any English word I know. In fact, even if we swap the G-U for a W, we get, well, weep. Well, it doesn't mean weep. But if we combine trick number three with trick number two and stick an S after that E with a hat, we get wasp. Yeah, Gep is the French for wasp. Et voilà. Those are my three tricks for being able to read French words without actually knowing any French. Now let's go back to that nonsense sentence I showed you at the start and see if we can make any more sense of it now. So we've got the word écureuil, however you say it, at the start. We now know that that means squirrel. After that, we've got étudier, swap the E for an S, and we know that that is now study. It means studies. Guillaume, we now know, is William. Le guerrier, the warrior. À means at. I'll give you that one for free. L'école, which is the school. Dans means in. I'll give you that one for free as well. La forêt, stick an S after the E and you get forest. The squirrel studies William the warrior at the school. In the forest. Now it makes far more sense. Thanks a lot for watching this video. I know it's a fair bit longer than all of my other ones. If you have got an aspect of the English language that you'd like me to make a video about, do let me know. Pop it in the comments below. I have been reading them and a couple of the videos I've made already have been inspired by those comments. So keep them coming. Please give this video a like and maybe share it, perhaps with someone who needs to brush up on their French. Also, subscribe to my channel. It would be lovely to get those numbers up a bit. Until next time, au revoir.