The French and English languages are related in few ways , because French is of Romanian origin descended from Latin with German and English influences, while English is a Germanic language with Latin and French influences . Thus English and French are related in few ways although they share some similarities they do have some differences that distinguish each language .
However the most important differences are both major and minor, between the two languages, such as the usage of false cognates these are words that look similar but have different meanings. French and english have quite large number of cognates including true cognates with similar meaning and false cognates with different meanings, and semi-false cognates these are words with some similar and some with different meanings. Here are few examples of cognates for better understanding absence (absence),ballet(ballet),calculatrice(calculator) ,festival (festival) ,impression (impression) ,musique (music) . Although some cognates being similar there are some other cognates which are similar in spelling but different in their meanings these words are called false cognates here are few examples of false cognates blesser (to hurt not to bless ), pain (bread not pain ), habit (article used for clothing not habit ) ,coin (corner not coin ,and location means rent not location of a place .
The next major difference is the accent of both the languages.in English language the accents are used only in few complicated words but in French there are tons of words that use the accents.
The capitalization in English and in French are also different from each other . For instance , in French months and days of the year are not capitalized whereas in English we use capital letters to write the months of the year. Similarly we do not capitalize religions, nationalities, titles in front of proper nouns, and languages.
The next major difference is the use of genders in French language like the masculine and feminine differentiation of words . Firstly when you learn a French word, you’ll see it paired with either its definite or indefinite article. The indefinite articles like “a or an” in English: un (masculine),une (feminine),des (plural)the definite articles or “the” in English : le (masculine), la (feminine) ,les (plural). The partitive articles or “some” in English: du (masculine),de la (feminine) and des (plural). As a second step , you’ll need to know the gender in order to determine which pronoun to use. For example, the usage of personal pronouns before the verbs (personal pronouns are je, tu, il, elle ,nous ,vous ,ils and elles ) .
There are also a few other minor differences which include the conjugation of verbs, the contractions , the negation of words , the pronunciation and punctuation of words and the word order of adverbs and adjectives. These differences between these languages make the understanding of the language difficult however the similarities between English and French helps the understanding more easier and efficient.