French [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION introduction French is one of the most widely taught languages in the world -chances are you already know a few phrases. Thanks to an invasion of England in the 11th century, it's also been a major contributor to the vocabulary of English (so if you missed out on the French lessons, you're still sure to know many French words). After centuries of contact with English and a shared prehistoric ancestor, French offers English-speakers a relatively smooth path to communicating in another language. The structure of a French sentence won't come as a surprise and the sounds of the language are generally common to English as well. The few sounds that do differ will be familiar to most through television and film examples of French speakers; the silent 'h' and the throaty 'r' for example. at a glance language name: French name in language: Français fron-say language family: Romance key country: France approximate number of speakers: 1st language: 80 million 2nd language: 50 million close relatives: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese donations to English: numerous - some estimate three fifths of everyday English vocabulary arrived via French That's not to say that what you hear on television is completely accurate, but adopting a faux-French accent as you make your way with this book will probably help you more than you'd expect. Though distantly related to English, French is more commonly associated with its Romance language siblings, Italian and Spanish. These languages developed from the Latin spoken by the Romans during their conquests of the 1st century BC. French evolved in a different way to Spanish and Italian though (which