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🇬🇧 → 🇫🇷

How easy is French for English speakers?

Going from English to French (Français) has a composite linguistic distance of 53% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

53% distance FSI Cat I (Easiest) — 600–750 hours
Lexical similarity
27%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance
77%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity
0%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match
100%

Latin → Latin

Genealogical kinship
40%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇬🇧 English
The museum is open every day except Monday.
🇫🇷 French
Le musée est ouvert tous les jours sauf le lundi.
🇬🇧 English
The natural sciences and the arts are important for education.
🇫🇷 French
Les sciences naturelles et les arts sont importants pour l'éducation.

Other easy languages for English speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from English:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between English and French. No signup.