European Travel Phrase Book by The Everything Series Editors

Author:The Everything Series Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2010-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

Introduction to French

French is a Romance language; in contrast, English belongs to the Germanic family. In theory, French and English should be very distinct languages, but in reality, there is German influence in French and Latin influence in English, not to mention a fair amount of French in English and vice versa. This means the two languages share a number of similarities. This chapter is an introduction to some basic facts about French as well as important similarities and differences between French and English.

Reading French

French is based on the same twenty-six-letter alphabet as English, although the importance of individual letters varies. For example, the letter Q is significantly more common in French than in English, while K and W are extremely rare in French, found only in words borrowed from other languages.

Like English, French can be very difficult in terms of pronunciation due to intricacies such as silent letters, multiple sounds for a single letter, and endless exceptions to whatever rules you manage to pin down. Therefore, the pronunciation key provided here does not explain how to read every letter combination in every situation, but rather attempts to simplify French pronunciation, to make it easier for you to get started. The key presents French letters and letter combinations, how they are represented in pronunciation guides used for that sound throughout this book, and a comparable sound in English, or in a French expression used in English.

PRONUNCIATION KEY

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