English and French - are they similar?

French and English – are the two languages similar to each other? It’s high time to find out. So let’s get started, shall we?

When I started learning French in Poland (where Polish is my native language) I actually noticed there are a few similarities in grammar between French and English. The first thing which comes to my mind is the construction “there is/ there are” with its French equivalent “Il y a”. Maybe the structures are not exactly the same but this is still something that does not exist in Polish at all and that’s why some (to put it mildly) Polish people might find it a bit difficult to understand the construction and hence make mistakes. For example in a sentence: There is a dog in the garden (Il y a un chien dans le jardin”) some tend to say: “In the garden is a dog” or even “Is a dog in the garden” which sounds horrible, doesn’t it?

I remember during one of my private classes in French my tutor was so surprised when she started explaining the structure “faire + infinitive” to me. Why was she stunned, flabbergasted even? Because this, again, is something that we don’t have in our native language but… we DO have in English J And when I interrupted her saying in Polish: ”Oh, I understand it, it reminds me of an English construction <<have something done>>” she heaved a sigh of relief as this grammar rule is really difficult to be explained to a Polish learner and she didn’t have to do it anymore. “I had my hair cut” cannot obviously literally be translated into French but the same parallel construction does at least exist - Je me suis fait couper les cheveux. So if you know an English construction you are far more likely to acquire its French equivalent. Well, at least I think so.

Finally, as for grammar, both languages have auxiliaries, which Polish people often omit while building a sentence in any of those languages... Those words don’t carry any meaning so why not omit them, so to speakJ But frankly speaking they forget to add them as this is something new and maybe weird for them as we don’t have auxiliaries in our native language eitherJ  

Obviously the presence of tenses or passive voice is another similarity, but all (I guess) countries have those in their languages so let’s not go into details...

However, there are probably the most similarities between French and English when it comes to vocabulary. Here are some words which look similar or even the same.

Commence = commencer

Visible = visible

Liberty = liberté

Information = information

Attention = attention

Adorable = adorable

Comfortable = confortable

Forest = Forêt  

The list goes on and on, I’m sure of that. What do you, Guys, think about the topic? Can you see any other similarities between the two languages? Let me know in the comments down below and provide some other examples of words or grammar structures.

Hope this post came in handy, greetings ;)