Vrais amis

In the very first lesson of our Absolute Beginner 1 course, we introduce you to the idea of cognates: words shared between languages. English has more than 7 500 of these words from French, and c'est garanti* you'd use at least one a day (think 'garage', 'entrepreneur', 'ballet' 'finance' and 'au pair').

As your learning progresses, we also admit there is another phenomenon at play, that of 'faux amis', or false friends (one of our tutors, Josephine prefers to call them 'bad friends' and she's not wrong!) These are words that look like English words, but have a different meaning (attention!*: attendre, journée and préservatifs may not mean what you think they do). But let's focus on the positive and return to the vrais amis*, which offer what all good friendships do - help and support when you need it.

Take a couple of minutes to regarder la liste* which is helpfully categorised into useful adjectives, nouns and verbs.

Be sure to remind yourself that you're reading French as you run your eye down the list. It can be quite a mind-bending exercise. Bonne lecture*!

*it’s guaranteed | *Be careful! | *true friends/cognates | *look at the list | *Happy reading!