FRENCH LANGUAGE - VOCABULARY
Two thirds of the French vocabulary is derived from Latin. The basic words are inherited from Vulgar Latin and often are marked by some slang bias as compared with Classical Latin. The French words which have developed from Latin are usually less recognisable than Italian words of Latin origin because as French evolved from Vulgar Latin, the unstressed final syllable of many words was dropped or elided into the following word.
A few words were inherited from the Gaulish language, such as crême (cream), mouton (ram), brébis (sheep) etc. Much more numerous are the German words (near 2% of the French vocabulary), mainly from Frankish: choisir (to choose), gai (gay), garantir (to guarantee), gagner (to gain) etc.
The world directions (nord, sud, est, ouest) and some nautical terms such as bateau (boat) and baupré (bowsprit) were borrowed from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) language. Modern English contributed with drainer (to drain), locquet (lock), wagon (wagon) etc. The Arabic words magasin (magazine), orange (orange) reached French mainly via Spanish.
The Greek words were inherited from Latin such as accabler (to encumber), baler (to dance) and gouverner (to govern), but their mass introduction was connected with the development of the scientific literature in French after the 16th century. At this time there were also many words borrowed from or influenced by Italian.
It is estimated that 12% (4,200) of common French words
found in a dictionary such as the Petit Larousse or Micro-Robert
Plus (35,000 words) are of foreign origin. About 25% (1,054)
of these foreign words come from English and are fairly recent
borrowings. The others are some 707 words from Italian, 550
from ancient Germanic languages, 481 from ancient Gallo-Romance
languages, 215 from Arabic, 164 from German, 160 from Celtic
languages, 159 from Spanish, 153 from Dutch, 112 from Persian
and Sanskrit, 101 from Native American languages, 89 from
other Asian languages, 56 from other Afro-Asiatic languages,
55 from Slavic languages and Baltic languages, 10 from Basque
and 144 (3%) from other languages.
Numerals
The French counting system is partially vigesimal: twenty (vingt) is used as a base number in the names of numbers from 60–99. The French word for 80 is quatre-vingts, which literally means "four twenties", and soixante-quinze (literally "sixty-fifteen") means 75. This reform arose after the French Revolution so as to unify the different counting systems. This system is comparable to the Old English use of score, as in "fourscore and seven" (87), or "threescore and ten" (70).
Belgian French and Swiss French are different in this respect. In Belgium and Switzerland 70 and 90 are septante and nonante. In Switzerland, depending on the local dialect, 80 can be quatre-vingts (Geneva, Neuchâtel, Jura) or huitante (Vaud, Valais, Fribourg). In Belgium, however, quatre-vingts is universally used.
It should also be noted that French uses a period or a space
to separate thousands where English uses a comma. The comma
is used in French numbers as a decimal point: 2,5 = deux virgule cinq.
