When is a Foreign Language Not "Foreign"?

I walked into my inner-city high school French One class, and started out by distributing textbooks, with the suggestion to "look through them while I finish giving them out". When I put the last book into a student's hand, I looked up to see what I always saw the first day of class - a sea of faces with expressions ranging from puzzlement to dread, or even terror. I knew what they were thinking. "How am I gonna pass this class?" "Uh-oh" and even "Get me outta here" Even in my next class, Spanish One, I saw heads buried in well-used texts, eyes bulging at the written form of a language they heard in the street, or even in some of their homes. Thoughts of an "easy A" gave way to despair. But I knew I could turn anxiety into self-assuredness in the fifteen minutes remaining in the class period.

In my French class I wrote the following on the blackboard. "Take out a sheet of paper and translate the following into English", followed by a list of twenty French words starting with la télévision, le téléphone, le théâtre, and le cinéma, and ending with la biologie and l'histoire. I was met with blank stares, and silence, except for the usual sassy "Yo miss, how you 'spec us to do dis?" "Oh, I forgot," I said with a smile "ignore the "le" and "la" and any marks above the letters (I would confuse them with lessons on articles and accents later that week).

Now we were cooking. Pens were scratching paper. "Yo, dis is easy!", "Oh man, I can do it!" "Miss, count dis as a quiz!" Most of them would have scored a perfect hundred percent. Magic? Hardly. The same scene occurred in my Spanish class later on, This time, el televisor, el teléfono, el teatro, and el cine topped a list that culminated with la biología and la historia. Again, feelings of impending failure quickly morphed into smug confidence. A miracle, right. NOT! I simply introduced my students to "cognates"

A cognate is a word in one language that looks exactly, or almost exactly, like a word in another language. Most people know that familiarity with any one of the five Latin-derived Romance languages, which are French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian, makes it easier to learn one of the others in the same family. My fluency in French and Spanish came in handy when I traveled to Italy. My building superintendent, who is Polish, can speak to the Russian immigrants in my building, thanks to the relationship of those two languages, which are both in the Slavic family. But did you know that English, which is also derived from Latin, also helps when guessing the meanings of words in any of the Romance languages? Although I use French and Spanish to illustrate because those were the languages I taught, you are free try this with any of the other three.

I am not talking about words we have adopted from Spanish or French. Some refer to words such as taco, patio, attaché, or cache as "borrowed" words, I haven't heard of any plans to give them back. So I prefer to say we adopted those words, since they have crept into our lexicon, especially when talking about cuisine --itself a word we adopted from French (soufflé, entrée), fashion (haute-couture, poncho), and international relations (coup d'état, junta). Adopted words are in English-language dictionaries. Cognates are still foreign words, but they are so similar to English, that we can identify them and even translate. Sometimes we are wrong. If you ask for a latte in Italy, you will be staring down dejectedly at a cup of milk, rather than the coffee creation you expected. How could you know that you have really uttered the Italian word for milk? A French waiter might wonder why you are ordering your baked dessert "instyle" when you specify "à la mode". And you just may confuse the concierge at your hotel in Mexico, when you inquire about the nearest "teatro" to see a movie. The reason? El teatro is for live performances; you need to find el cine to catch the latest flick. We call these words that fool us, "false cognates" and the French refer to them as the more illustrative "faux amis", or "false friends". At best, they will cause a furrowed brow; sometimes you will be laughed at, and you won't know why. But take your revenge! Go ahead and have your own fun! Laugh at the Frenchman who tells you he feels so refreshed because he had his morning douche. It's not a case of "too much information! La douche is the French word for shower. And don't expect any juicy detail when your Venezuelan cousin tells you she is being molestado by her upstairs neighbor; It is more likely that you will hear about loud music than sexual assault. Molestar is the Spanish word meaning to bother, annoy, disturb.

Anyway, despite some awkward moments, cognates can be our true friends. Here is a quiz:
one list of Spanish words another in French. Translate to English. No cheating allowed; i.e. no dictionary and you must not have prior knowledge of the language. Ready?

Spanish: la psicología, el automóvil, la radio, la astronomía, el restaurante
French: la psychologie, l'automobile, la radio, l'astronomie, le restaurant

If you guessed (the answers are the same for both languages): psychology, automobile, radio, astronomy, and restaurant, you have a perfect score of 100%. If you are astute enough to observe that these words all relate to rather modern terminology, give yourself extra credit. Although the words in English, as in other Western tongues, originated with Latin, they have had hundreds of years to evolve into their separate and different forms. Eventually, regional dialects became distinct languages, as different parts of the Roman Empire became countries, separated by bodies of water or mountains. But there are so many modern inventions, disciplines, and concepts that were born in the Industrial Age, when different populations traveled and came into regular contact with one another. More often than not, the same word was created for everyone, with but the slightest modification to make it uniquely French, Spanish, or befitting any language. Thus, electricity morphed into éléctricité (French) and electricidad (Spanish). And even more surprisingly, this even holds true in languages written in other alphabets. if you were to read these words in Greek or Russian, for example, you would find modern words that didn't require a dictionary to translate.

If you want proof of the above, pick up a textbook in one of the sciences or technology disciplines, in any language with an alphabet you can read. See how many words you can recognize. Wow your friends at a cocktail party, even before they get into the spiked punch and love anything you do. On one of my first days of the school term, after one of my cognate lessons, one of my students made me the admiration of my teaching colleagues. It was customary in my school for teachers to stand outside our classrooms during the change of class period, so that we could direct student traffic and greet the teens as they came to class. This procedure also had the benefit of making us privy to adolescent conversations. I suddenly spotted one of the students from my earlier French One class as he yelled to his buddy, "Yo Miguel, see ya later. I gotta go to Bee-al-o-zhee...." Miguel looked at his friend with a puzzled expression, and my student yelled back "that's Biology... See? I speak French!", he beamed. I smiled as my fellow teacher gave me a thumbs-up and said "pretty good, Cohen"