It is often seen that learning a language becomes easier for some people than others. This happens because of the similarities of their parent language with the language they are trying to learn. For instance; when one is concerned about how to learn French then he or she could consider depending on related language provided they know the related language well. For instance; a person speaking English may find learning French easier than a person that speaks Hebrew or Chinese. Reason is that these languages lack the similarities with French that English language has.

Taking Advantage of Related Language

Some languages are closely related to each other. Owing to their origin and ethnic backgrounds as well as geographical proximities, they resemble each other closely in formation as well as presentation of senses. One can have a look at the relationship between English and French to understand this feature. English speaking learners can take advantage of their relationships to learn French easy.

French and English

• French and English are related languages.
• French is Latin language influenced by German and English.
• English is Germanic with Latin and French influences.
• Alphabets are almost identical in both languages.
• A number of true cognates are identical as well.
• Knowledge of English can help learning French language.

French and English Differences

Despite all the similarities, the two languages; French and English also have a number of differences. Such differences can be major or minor. Some of the differences are –

• French language has accents in many words while English has accents only in foreign words.
• French language has agreements and articles and capitalization are common in it. English do not have agreements and articles and capitalization are less common there.
• Conjugations are different in French for each grammatical person. Such conjugations are different only for the third person in English.
• Contractions are essential for French language but optional as well as informal for English.
• Gender divergence is present in French language for all nouns and also most of the pronouns. In case of English language it is present only for the personal pronouns.
• French language has liaisons, which is not there in English language.
  
• Negation in French comes in two words as against one word in English.
  
• Only a few verbs require prepositions in French but are a common feature for phrasal verbs in English.
• French language puts stress at the end of every rhythmic group. But English language has stressed syllable in each of the words as well as stress on important words.
• French language has many common Roman numerals. They are often ordinal in nature. On the other hand English has less number of Roman numerals and they are only sporadically ordinal.
• Subjunctive is a common feature in French language but extremely rare in English.

Some Other Differences

Differences between English and French do not end here despite all their similarities. Various other minor differences are also there in the two languages. Such differences count while trying to learn to speak French.

• Some words are false cognates. They look and sound similar but their meaning are completely different.
• Multiple differences are there in pronunciation. Marked differences are in the pronunciation of vowels as well as the letter R.
• Punctuations used in the two languages have different use as well as spacing.
• While there are many silent letters in both languages, they are not identical in nature.
• Grammatical number of the nouns used in the two languages in case of singular and plural numbers could be different.
• Pattern of spelling varies largely in the two languages.
• Order of words and formation of sentences; use of adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and negations could vary from time to time.

Effects of Similarities and Differences

While the similarities in the two languages can help mutual learning of either, the differences can create problems. Especially when someone is trying to learn French online this could pose major problems. In a brick and concrete classroom the instructor would be close proximity and can come up to the rescue of the learner at the time of need. Such facilities in online learning are fewer. Though many online training sites will offer 24/7 customer support, yet getting the fast hand feel of the pronunciation is much different online in one-to-one confrontations.

Online courses will have the advantages of affordability, convenience of time, learning from the safety and security of own home and in the learner’s way. And if the one inconvenience of audio is addressed, it could definitely be the better option.