^^

In French, we have what we call an accent circonflexe, which is usually sign of  a former s that was erased during the evolution of French.

Modern French form: Forêt, hôpital, côte;

Older form: forestis, hospitalis, costa.

This is very interesting because in English we have a lot of those French-origin words but still with the s: forest, hospital, coast.

Some day, I was pondering the word guêpe (wasp), I tried to find by myself the old version of this word, guespe? guespa? guazpacho? I looked it up in the wonderful Antidote (French dictionary software) and I found that it actually comes from the Frankish word waspa, which comes from the Latin word vespa… wait what?! Waspa? Like, like wasp? How on Earth can guêpe and wasp
both have the same root? I was literally flabbergasted!

Ah English, you never stop surprising me!

My German Experience

The first I really discovered what German was, I was maybe 12-13 years old, I found my dad’s old French/German dictionary. Wanting to learn more about German, I started to learn German, but it ended up nowhere because I didn’t need to learn German so I didn’t have enough will. Nevertheless, in September I’m going to college and I will be doing a German course, but because I don’t think learning a language at school is very effective and I really want to learn German, I will work a lot on my own, to basically teach myself German, just like I did with English (I don’t want to brag, but I think it worked out pretty well). I will try to write my progress as much as I can on this blog as suggested by Benny lewis in his book  Language Hacking Guide. So there you go, I hope you will follow me in this awesome adventure! I need you!

 

Always feel free to correct my mistakes, I’m here to learn!