True French-English cognates

Joseph Greenberg, in his book "Language in the Americas", gives a list of "most of the cognates from French and English". The example serves to show that it would be difficult to show that French and English are genetically related by examining only the lexicons of those two languages. Diana Inkpen and I have transcribed the list of 82 cognate pairs from IPA to standard orthography (our experiments are described in this paper). The list is given below. Notes: An asterisk marks cognate pairs which no longer can be considered translations because of radical semantic shifts.


Cognate French English Remarks
1 pied foot
2 père father
3 poisson fish
4 plein full
5 pour for
6 frère brother
7 fai(re) do
8* fut be
9* fend(re) bite
10 vent wind
11 ver worm
12 voul(oir) will
13 veuve widow
14* vive quick
15 ven(ir) come
16* vêt(ir) wear
17* mois moon mois means month, which is also a cognate
18 mère mother
19 moyen mid millieu and middle are also cognates
20 trois three
21 étoile star
22 tonner(re) thunder tonner (noun) is also a cognate
23 tu thou
24* toit thatch
25* traire draw
26 deux two
27 dix ten
28 dent tooth
29 cinq five
30 six six
31 sept seven
32 soleil sun
33 sel salt
34 cent hund(red)
35 soeur sister Old English sweoster influenced by Norse systir
36 sable sand
37 sueur sweat
38* (re)cev(oir) have
39 chaud hot
40 chien hound
41 chef head
42* cher whore
43 genou knee
44 joug yoke
45 neuf nine
46 nez nose
47 nuit night
48 neuf new
49 nom name
50 nid nest
51 neige snow
52 nombril navel
53 nu nak(ed)
54 noix nut
55 langue tongue
56* lu(ire) light
57 lèvre lip
58 long long
59 loup wolf
60 léch(er) lick
61 laine wool
62 racine root
63 quatre four
64 qui who
65 que what
66 quand when
67 coeur heart
68 corne horn
69 cour yard
70 guêpe wasp
71 grain corn
72 huit eight
73 oeil eye
74 oreille ear
75 ongle nail
76 oeuf egg
77 (as)se(oir) sit
78 un one
79 je I
80 nous us
81 moi me
82* (ce)t the

Greenberg's list is not complete. Below are 14 additional cognate pairs extracted from the Comparative Indoeuropean Data Corpus. The cognation decisions were made by Isidore Dyen.


Cognate French English
83 à at
84 peu few
85 comment how
86 dans in
87 rouge red
88 droit right
89 semence seed
90 coud(re) sew
91 court short
92 suc(er) suck
93 nous we
94 vous you
95 non not
96 where

After a bit of research I was able to find more pairs. (Naturally, thousands of Latin-derived words are not elligible. Only true genetic cognates that go back to Proto-Indoeuropean are included here.)


Cognate French English
97 essieu axle thanks to Anthony Grant for correcting this one
98 barbe beard
99* feuille blade
100* dur tree
101* boeuf cow
102 jeune young
103 colline hill
104 cru raw
105* mort murder
106 mousse moss the French word might be of Germanic origin
107 neveu nephew Old English nefa influenced by French neveu
108* pont path
109 puce flea
110* porc farrow
111 suave sweet
112* tenu thin
113 autre other
114 milieu middle
115 premier first
116 fleur bloom pairs 116-120 proposed by Xian Chen
117 léger light
118 lâche slack
119* onde water
120* être stand
121 fève bean
122 fond bottom
123 larme tear
124 grue crane
125 (co)nnait(re) know
126 hier yester(day)
127 plan flat
128* verbe word
129 sur over
130 loutre otter

Are there any other genetic cognates betwen French and English? My feeling is that there are many more pairs out there. If you know some, please send me a message.

Greg Kondrak

Created: Oct 2004

Last updated: Oct 2009