French words you already know

If French feels strangely familiar on the page, there's a reason: after the Norman conquest of 1066, French poured into English for centuries, and today roughly a third of English words trace back to it. The result is thousands of cognates — words that look and mean almost the same in both languages. Many French words are simply English words you already know, sitting on the page waiting to be recognised.

The real challenge in French isn't the vocabulary you can see — it's the gap between spelling and sound. But understanding comes first, and understanding is mostly free. Here are the patterns and lists that unlock it.

Five patterns that unlock thousands of words

Learn these and you can often predict the French word straight from the English one.

1. English -tion → French -tion (often identical)

French keeps the -tion ending, so a huge number of these words are spelled exactly the same — only the pronunciation changes.

2. English -ty → French -té

Abstract nouns ending in -ty become -té (and they're feminine: la).

3. English -ist → French -iste

People-and-profession nouns ending in -ist simply add an -e.

4. English -ic → French -ique

Adjectives ending in -ic become -ique.

5. English -ary → French -aire

Words ending in -ary map onto -aire.

Words that are already identical

Some French words you can use today without changing a letter — many of them English already borrowed back. Here are a few, grouped by where you'll meet them.

Travel and getting around

Food and drink

Everyday life

Watch out: a few false friends

French has some classic traps. Actuellement means currently, not actually; librairie is a bookshop, not a library (that's bibliothèque); attendre means to wait, not to attend; and pain is simply bread. We cover more on the Learn French page.

From recognising words to speaking them

With French, the vocabulary gives you an unusually large head start — the hard part is pronunciation, with its silent letters, nasal vowels and liaison. That's the gap Navoq is built to close. You start from the words you already recognise, then practise them out loud in short, real sentences with instant pronunciation feedback, so you learn to say French, not just read it.

The cognates above are your first few hundred words for free. The next step is making them yours.