You have been doing your french lessons diligently for sometime now and already have a fundamental understanding pronunciation, verb tenses, parts of spoken communication, and even the rules in writing. You’re curious how you can continue with the studying momentum. Now is the time to see new words in the rocket french vocabulary.
Simply goes it
In lots of ways, studying and enlarging your french vocabulary are simple when equated with other languages. The reason for this is a long time ago, there had been a vigorous cross-fertilization, so to speak, between Latin words and phrases that made it both into french and English languages.
For a language learner, word comparisons between one’s own tongue and that surrounding the studied language is such a huge boost. A word of caution, though: alike words could be a swear word in one country and mean something entirely different in another.
Like words
The’re words, naturally, that mean precisely the identical in both English and french. One example is the word ‘actual’ meaning that similar in London and in Madrid, although there is a departure in the location of the stress.
There are, of course, many words that’re spelled similar in English and in french but have completely different significances. For instance, the expression ‘arena’ in English signifies a riding place or a sports ground. In french, ‘arena’ normally implies something regarding ’sand’.
Prefixes
You can broaden your vocabulary, too, if you make the most of suffixes and prefixes. They are both very common in English and french. In English and in french, the prefix ‘mal’ has a bad meaning. Instances in English would be ‘malady’, ‘malevolent’, ‘malfunction’ and ‘malice’. In french, the words would comprise ‘malevolo’ (malevolent), ‘malformacion’ (malformation) and ‘malvado’ (malignant). They all start with the prefix ‘mal’.
Suffixes
Suffixes are troublesome in both English and french. There are two fundamental kinds of suffixes in french: augmentative and diminutive. Progressive suffixes relate to size - ‘arbolete’ (large tree), ‘mujerona’ (hard woman) or ‘perrazo’ (dangerous dog). The diminutive meantime implies some sense of tenderness like ‘casita’ (tiny house), ‘abuelita’ (dear grandmother) and ‘gordito’ (chubby).
Current new words
Many french sites put up words right from contemporary publications read by local speakers, and are thus deemed part of up-to-date, day to day spoken communication. Studying french by committal to memory is the hardest method to retain them, as well as the least fun. If you have to memorize, try to do them by classes for easier recall.
Examples would be a checklist of body areas, weather terms, shopping terms, and expressions used in dining and eating, maybe. This is one way of developing your vocabulary.
The “tion” and “cion” word endings
In the main, an English word that ends in “tion” or “sion” normally has a counterpart in french: invitation/invitacion, insect/insecto, occasion/occasion, information/informacion and excavation/excavacion.
Words like politician and musician becomes politico and ‘musico’. Observe that there are also many comparisons between words in french and roots or equivalent words in English. The word ‘pensar’ means to think about and the English word, pensive, also means thoughtfully turning over something.
All in all, studying the french vocabulary and extending yours is the better part in learning french. The reason is because it is fun.