Reading French using Cognate Clues

May 11th, 2011... From The Desk of Corinne Corbeau:

If I told you that you could read a book in French – a language you may be just starting to learn, but really barely know – you wouldn't believe me, would you? It sounds impossible! But I'm about to teach you the art of reading French using cognate clues – and once you've gotten the idea, you'll be amazed at the things you can read!

To begin with, what is a cognate? It refers to a word in one language that is linguistically related to a word in another. For example, "chat" in French means "cat" in English – and we can see that the only difference between the two words is the addition of a letter. It's absolutely possible to learn to read French from cognate clues – capitalizing on the similarity of French words to words you know in English.

Let's give it a try. Here are the first few sentences of Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

Lorsque j'avais six ans j'ai vu, une fois, une magnifique image, dans un livre sur la Forêt Vierge qui s'appelait « Histoires Vécues ». Ça représentait un serpent boa qui avalait un fauve. Voilà la copie du dessin.

I know what you're thinking – "No way can I read that." But reading French using cognate clues is not that difficult. You'll see.

Admittedly, lorsque is not a word you may know, so we'll skip it for now. Right away, though, you'll see j'avais – I had – and then six ans. I had six years, or I was six years old. The narrator has told us something about himself.
 
Skimming along a few unfamiliar phrases, you'll come to the words une magnifique image. That sounds very nearly like English. It could mean something slightly different in French, but since we're just reading French from cognate clues now, we'll accept that it means approximately the same thing in both French and English and go on. Where did the six-year-old find the magnificent image? Dans un livre – "in a book." The next word is sur, which you may know means "on." The book is on – what? It's on la Forêt Vierge. Forêt may remind you of "forest" (and that would be correct). Now try to say "Vierge" out loud. Does it remind you of "virgin" – especially when combined with "forest"? If so, you'd be right again.

Next we have qui – who or which – and s'appelait. That may remind you of a similar French word – m'appelle, as in "Je m'appelle" whatever your name is. So this refers to the name of the book, which you could have surmised from the fact that the book's title is in quotation marks. Histoires looks very much like "histories" or "stories," although Vécues reminds us of nothing in particular.
 
Now onto the next sentence. Ça représentait – let's try "That represented" on for size. This must refer to the magnificent image. (Isn't reading French from cognate clues fun? It's like detective work!) And what does this picture represent? Un serpent boa – that's easy! A boa constrictor! A boa constrictor who is doing something we can't yet make out. Using the illustration as well as the text, voilà! La copie du dessin – the copy of the design, or picture.
 
And sure enough, right below the text there is a picture of a boa constrictor, and he appears to be wrapped around an animal and poised to eat him.
 
So what have we read so far? The narrator was six years old when he saw a story book in which there was a magnificent image of a boa constrictor eating an animal. Now, let's read the real translation of the French text:

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing. (from The Little Prince, translated by Katherine Woods)

Reading French using cognate clues can really extend your ability to read your new language, while engaging your imagination in a whole new way. Try it and see!

If you want more proven tips and tricks learning French fast, then check out my guide,
How to Learn French...

Regards,

Corinne Corbeau

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