2.5 Latin and Greek roots — the academic vocabulary you share — Epoché
What you will be able to do Convert between French -ie and English -y in the names of many fields of study, and know that these nouns are feminine. Read the Greek stems that French and English share — the ones for study, writing, measure, law, people, life, mind — and combine them, so that a compound you have never met is readable from its parts. Convert the Greek noun endings where French and English differ by a letter or two: -ème against -em , -èse against -esis , -yse against -ysis . Read a French sentence about a field of study and understand it, which will prepare you for later lessons in philosophy and argument. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English C'est quoi, la philosophie ? [1] What is philosophy? C'est quoi la démocratie ? [2] What is democracy? J'ai toujours détesté la biologie. [3] I've always hated biology. Prerequisites : 2.4 — you should already be able to tell the Norman layer from the classical one and to correct for the narrowing English did to the words it borrowed; see 2.4 Cognates if you need it. The last lesson was about the unreliable half of your free vocabulary. This one is about the most reliable part of the reliable half, and it is also the part that matters most for what you will eventually want to read in French. Philosophy, history, science, criticism, argument: the vocabulary of all of them is nearly common property between the two languages, because neither language invented it. Both went to the same place for it, which was Greek by way of Latin, and both went there with a pen rather than an ear — copying a written form rather than imitating a heard one. That last detail is the whole reason this layer is trustworthy. A word learned by ear drifts, because each generation of speakers hears it slightly differently. A word copied off a page does not drift in its spelling, because there is always a page to check against. So the technical vocabulary of French and English is not merely similar; it is very nearly the same set of letters in the same order, with a small number of regular adjustments where the two spelling systems disagree. Learn the adjustments and the whole layer opens at once. The rule Four correspondences, in order of how much they are worth. French -ie is English -y , and the noun is feminine. This covers the names of disciplines in -y , and many related nouns: the words for philosophy, biology, geography, astronomy, economy, energy, democracy. If the English noun for a discipline or related concept ends in -y , drop the -y and write -ie , then use la . It is as reliable as the -té rule from lesson 2.3. The sub-endings follow from it. English -logy is -logie , -graphy is -graphie , -metry is -métrie , -nomy is -nomie , -cracy is -cratie . These are not five extra rules; they are the first rule with a Greek stem in front. The Greek noun endings shift by a letter or two. English -em is French -ème (problem, system), English -esis is French -èse (thesis, hypothesis, synthesis), English -ysis is French -yse (analysis). Note the accent on the first two, and note that the -èse and -yse forms are one syllable shorter. The Greek letters are mostly spelled the same. Where English writes ph , th , ch , rh or y in a learned word, French usually writes the same. The differences are small but real: a doubled letter can be single in French (English symmetry , French symétrie ), and English rhythm is French rythme . This is why the words look identical on the page even when they sound nothing alike. Rule 3 has a small trap in it. The accent in -ème and -èse is not decoration; it tells you which vowel to say, and leaving it out is a spelling mistake in French exactly as leaving out a letter would be in English. Since English gives you no accent to copy, you have to learn that this family carries one. Reading a compound from its parts The most valuable thing in this lesson is not any list of words but the habit of splitting a long word into pieces. A learned word in either language is usually two or three Greek pieces glued together, and once you know the pieces you can read combinations nobody taught you — which is what makes this layer effectively infinite rather than merely large. Take the stem meaning study of , which shows up as -logie . Put the stem for life in front and you have biology; the stem for mind gives psychology; the stem for society gives sociology; the stem for ancient things gives archaeology; the stem for the earth gives geology. Now take the stem meaning writing , which is -graphie : the earth gives geography, life gives biography, light gives photography. Take the stem meaning measure , which is -métrie : the earth again gives geometry. Take the stem meaning rule , which is -cratie : the people give democracy. Every one of those words exists in English too, with the same parts in the same order. So you are not learning vocabulary here; you are learning that the vocabulary you have is already bilingual, and that the seam between the parts is in the same place in both languages. When you meet a French word of this kind that you have never seen, look for the seam first. If the second half is one of the five endings above you know what kind of word it is, and the first half will usually be a stem you recognise from an English word. Two cautions. Some of these compounds exist in only one of the two languages, so the parts will give you a meaning that is not a word you know — that is fine, and the meaning will often still be right. And a few have specialised differently: the French word behind autonomy also means the range of a vehicle and the life of a battery, which is a sense English does not have at all. Split the word, then check the sentence. In sentences Ten sentences from the corpus, all of them about fields of study or about the machinery of argument. Read the French first. French English C'est quoi, la philosophie ? [1] What is philosophy? C'est quoi la