Dalton Rees

ENGL 1200
Johnston
13 December 2015
Comparing and Contrasting the Linguistic Elements of French and English
When initially presented with the premise of selecting another language to compare and
contrast with the beloved language of my homeland (English, of course), I was unable to think of
a more fitting pattern of human vocal utterances than the French language. While my
understanding of the language is nominal at best due to my inattentive experience grappling with
it in an introductory French class in high school, it evokes a profound degree of interest when
engaging French music and film. With the looming fact that I will need to attain and perform the
language at a 2200 level as a prerequisite for my English degree at the U in approaching
semesters, this project appeals to me as a fitting place to dive into the enigmatic realm of
acquiring a foreign language with the help of the fantastic linguistic information Ive encoded
through this course. Through my guided analysis, I will compare and contrast the French and
English languages phonologically, morphologically, and syntactically. With directed intellectual
wherewithal and a bit of luck, this will serve as an applied demonstration of my accrued
knowledge in ENGL-1200.
With the respective articulation of sound being the linguistic framework of human
language, the phonological similarities and distinctions of the two languages at large is a
fantastic place to begin. Through the influential induction of French into the developmental
processes of English through the 11th century Norman Conquest of England, both languages
share very similar grammatical elements.

While both languages employ the twenty-six letter Latin alphabet, French contains a
number of alternative letters with diacritics including: , , , , , , , , , , , , and . Relative
to the manners of articulation with each diacritic letter, these unique characters are placed into
five distinctive categories being: the acute accent (limited to ), the cedilla (also limited to the
single character, ), grave accent (including , , and ), circumflex (including , , , , and ),
and diaeresis (including , , and ). As one can determine from the reoccurring symbols of each
group, the categorization of the letters is distinguished by the overlying accent mark. Each accent
mark implies a specific manner of articulation, for example: the acute accent (), also denoted as
aigu, modifies a words pronunciation to ay, apparent in the word march (market) being
pronounced mar-shay. The cedilla (), in contrast, is employed to entail a c having a soft s sound
rather than a hard k, apparent in its usage in the word garon (boy) being pronounced as gahrsohn. Transitioning into the larger categories, the grave accent (, , and ) can be used in a
variety of contexts and over virtually any vowel, always entailing a glottal eh sound- evident in
the commonly-used word trs (very) and its pronunciation tr-eh. Highly unusual in that it does
not entail alternative pronunciation but is a required prerogative for establishing ones ethos
while writing in French, the circumflex is used in content words like fort (forest) and fte
(feast). The final category of French accent marks is the diaeresis (, , and ), also denoted as
trma, uniformly placed above the second vowel in a word phrase when both are pronounced
separately; take for example the word coincidence, being pronounced as ko-ehn-see-dahns.
The apparent differences between the French and English alphabetic usage relative to
pronunciation is only a single phonological distinction which serves as an obstacle for ESL
French learners and vice versa. A common phonological point of contrast is the English
pronunciation of h in the beginning of words like hat and hippo: while entailing clear

annunciation in English, the initial h sound is omitted in the French language; a similar
phenomenon occurs in many other words and phrases with articulate initial and ending sounds
(especially with the English use of and ) since these are almost always condensed or not
pronounced in the French language. This can most likely be attributed to the French emphasis on
dental articulation and near-absolute absence of interdental usage, particularly evident when a
native French speaker endeavors to pronounce English minimal pairs like bat/but, berry/very,
fast/past, and ship/sheep. The often intimidating amount of English diphthongs (ai, au, oi for
example) also factors into the difficulty of native French speakers transitioning into English since
fewer exist in the French language, those that are existent being fundamentally different in
pronunciation. As suggested by the previously-mentioned linguistic anomalies, the most
prominent phonological distinction between French and English is the different manners of
articulation and pronunciation of similar word combinations; this can, in the most simplistic and
general means possible, be attributed to the usage of diacritic letters in French contrasting with
the distinctive ordering of vowels in English to produce unique sounds and pronunciations.
Although there are a number of fundamental morphological similarities between the
French and English languages, the existing distinctions often serve as great obstacles for
transitional second-language learners. In regards to the various morphemes employed, both
languages contain active/passive voice, auxiliary verbs as well as participles, and inflectional
tenses. Due to the previously cited historical influence of French on the English language, many
content words are very similar in appearance and meaning, allowing beginning students of either
language to quickly learn and encode basic vocabulary; an example of this would be
morphologically-similar words with straight translations like defend/dfendre, severe/svre,
cinema/cinma, and demonstration/demonstration. However, this is not a uniform theme, as

demonstrated by these radically different meanings for perceptually similar words: in French, the
word actuel (meaning current in relation to time) appears to be very similar to the English word
actual (meaning real or exact), or the commonly-confused French word dception (translating to
disappointment) appearing very similar to the English word deception (meaning the action of
deceiving). An overlying morphological difference that serves to confuse native English speakers
is the French usage of feminine and masculine words- a linguistic element nonexistent in the
English language. This is most commonly recognized in the distinction between le (masculine)
and la (feminine), apparent in virtually all content words. The individual usage of each form of
the determiner entails radically different meanings, a cautionary example of this being that le
mari means husband while la mari means marijuana- it is imperative to recognize this
distinction in a French-speaking country to avoid being mistaken for propositioning to purchase
a bag of cannabis when one is simply looking for their significant other, particularly in the
presence of law enforcement entities. Unfortunately, there is no universal rule that one could
apply when determining whether or not a word is feminine or masculine- French learners simply
have to suck it up and memorize the word-specific uses. Another contrasting morphological
element in the French language is the reduced reliance of capital letters when using proper
nouns. While a minor difference, this can potentially be confusing to English speaks who are
conditioned to capitalize names, locations, and dates. This is contrast is apparent in the French
words langlais (English), je (self-referent I), and janvier (meaning January).
Syntactically, French and English are somewhat similar, through hold a highlydisorienting contrast. There is no existent determiner for to be in the French language, creating
a heavy reliance on verb conjugations when referring to an individual vocation or action; each of
these words have three distinct forms relative to the tense, whether it be past, present, or future-

each relevant to the agent of the phrase, for example: when attempting to convey the English
verb phrase I spoke in French, one must take the agent and tense into account, translating to je
parlai, demonstrating the self-referent usage of the French verb parler (meaning to speak).
While studying French, it may be pertinent to keep a conjugation chart handy as this is often an
insurmountable obstacle for native English speaker seeking to learn the language. Once one
understands French verb conjugation, encoding on a syntactic level can be comparatively
painless since both languages utilize the common subject-verb-object sentence structure,
conveying meaning and intention in very similar ways.
Although other minute distinctions between French and English certainly exist and may
have not been addressed in my analysis, the material covered effectively encapsulates the stark
overlying similarities and contrasting linguistic elements at a comprehensive surface level,
serving to demonstrate my ability to apply the knowledge Ive attained through this introductory
linguistics course. Considering that I still find the French language and the greater study of
linguistics to be devastatingly confusing, this is quality progress if nothing else.