French is one of the Romance languages (alongside Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and other less spoken ones). That means French evolved from Latin.
That doesn’t mean that Latin grammar isn’t harder than French grammar (it is -and by a lot). Nor does it mean that every French word comes from Latin.
Some French words come from Frankish (an ancient Germanic language spoken by the Franks), and some come from Gaulish (an ancient Celtic language).
More recently, French has also borrowed words from other languages, including English.
Growing up in France, I read the French comic book series Asterix. It’s about a Gaulish village that resists the Roman invasion with the help of the magic potion brewed by their druid (humorously named “Getafix” in the English version).
The premise aligns with a historical reality: the Gallic Wars that Julius Caesar waged against the Gauls. The stories themselves are, of course, highly fictional (Asterix’s friend Obelix throws menhirs, those enormous rocks like those in Stonehenge).
The Gauls are often presented as the ancestors of the French. At least, this is the idea you’d get by reading the school books printed in France during the late 19th and much of the 20th century.
The expression “Nos ancêtres les Gaulois” (Our ancestors, the Gauls) remains well-known in France, but that notion is now critiqued as an oversimplification of French history.
Given all this, it might come as a surprise that the majority of French vocabulary words come from Latin, with only a sprinkling of words that come from Gaulish.
About 85% of French vocabulary words come from Latin.
We have constructed lists of the thousand most common words in Latin and French. It is easy to find French words that are very similar to the corresponding Latin terms.
Here are some examples:
| French word | Latin word | English meaning |
|---|---|---|
| vérité | veritas | truth |
| vie | vita | life |
| amour | amor | love |
| lycée | lyceum | high school |
| nuire | nocere | to harm |
| ami | amicus | friend |
| deviner | divinare | to guess |
| père | pater | father |
| fils | filius | son |
| femme | femina | woman |
| naissance | nascentia | birth |
| frère | frater | brother |
| voir | videre | to see |
| froid | frigidus | cold |
French is relatively easy to learn because of all these French vocabulary words that come from Latin (some of which are similar to English which also has many Latin-based words). For instance:
| French | English | Latin |
|---|---|---|
| personne | person | persona |
| histoire | history | historia |
| famille | family | familia |
| activité | activity | activitas |
| société | society | societas |
| musique | music | musica |
| mémoire | memory | memoria |
Not all French vocabulary words come from Latin. Some come from other languages, such as Gaulish and Frankish.
The French word “mouton” (sheep) is very different from the corresponding Latin word (which is “ovis”). This is because the word “mouton” comes from Gaulish.
Here are some French words that come from Gaulish:
| French Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| boue | mud |
| bec | beak |
| chêne | oak |
| chemin | path/road |
| druide | druid |
| mouton | sheep |
| ruche | beehive |
| alouette | lark (bird) |
| gobelet | cup/goblet |
| bouleau | birch tree |
The word “France” comes from an ancient term that refers to the region inhabited by the Franks. History books about France talk a lot about Kings of the Franks like Clovis and Charlemagne.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some French vocabulary words come from Frankish (the ancient Germanic language spoken by the Franks).
| French Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| blanc | white |
| guerre | war |
| halle | market hall |
| gant | glove |
| jardin | garden |
| banc | bench |
| hache | axe |
| bûche | log of wood |
The Frankish origin of the French words “blanc” (white) and “guerre” (war) explains why these terms are so different from their Latin counterparts (“albus” and “bellum”).
Many French vocabulary words are derived from Latin, and those often have a somewhat similar spelling, but not always.
For example, the Latin word « calidus » is the origin of the French word « chaud » (warm). These two words look sufficiently different that most French people wouldn't recognize the connection unless they had studied Latin.
Another example: the Latin word « asinus » doesn't look similar enough to the French word « âne » (donkey), for it to be easily recognizable, even though both are etymologically related.
Because of this, French speakers typically can only recognize a fraction of the Latin words appearing in a Latin text.
In some cases, they will be able to infer the meaning of a Latin phrase. But in most cases, they won't recognize enough Latin words to understand the meaning of a Latin sentence.
You are a Francophone, and you want to know if you could understand Latin? Test your abilities by trying to translate these Latin quotes into French!
| Latin | French / English |
|---|---|
| Accipe quam primum, brevis est occasio lucri | Agis tout de suite, les chances de réussite durent peu. (Act now, the chances of success do not last.) |
| Abundans cautela non nocet | L’excès de prudence ne peut pas nuire. (Abundant caution does no harm.) |
| Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur | C’est dans le besoin que l’on reconnait ses vrais amis. (A true friend is recognized in difficult times.) |
French is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. The same cannot be said of Latin.
You can travel to France, meet French people, have conversations, and practice your French.
With Latin, you are unlikely to have a conversation (except maybe in the Vatican City, but even there, you would likely speak Italian).
In most cases, those who learn Latin use the language only for reading ancient texts such as those by Roman authors like Virgil, Ovid, and Horace.
It’s not just the availability of opportunities for practice that makes French easier to learn than Latin. It’s also the grammar, which is simpler in French than in Latin.
For instance, French has two grammatical genders, while Latin has three:
| French | Latin | English |
|---|---|---|
| lune (feminine) |
luna (feminine) |
moon |
| soleil (masculine) |
sol (masculine) |
sun |
| lumière (feminine) |
lumen (neuter) |
a light |
| nom (masculine) |
nomen (neuter) |
name |
Latin also uses declensions, which are changes in word endings that indicate the grammatical cases. There are six Latin cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative. These indicate how nouns and adjectives relate to other words in the sentence.
ConclusionFrench is a Latin-based language, and a large part of French vocabulary is derived from Latin. Some of these words are close to the original Latin term, while others have changed a lot in pronunciation and spelling.
Although French and Latin share many linguistic similarities, there are other languages that are closer to Latin: for instance Italian and Spanish.
For more on this, see these language comparisons: Latin vs Spanish and Latin vs Italian.
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