Two essays for the price of one

Comparing notes with a fellow student after a French exam involving essays on subjects such as l'enseignement, education, she revealed that she had indeed tackled that particular subject despite the fact that it seemed to be the same as another one on our exam paper: l'écologie (en France). Despite it's being close enough to the English equivalent, 'ecology', she had somehow linked this to the word école and assumed that it meant 'schooling'. So she wrote the same essay twice - and was disappointed to fail!

Sent by: Lyn

Comments

Adrien2008-02-18

That is tricky, but Greek comes to help: école comes from ancient Greek skolè and écologie from ancient Greek oikia, home/house which also gave birth to economy in our languages. So, in one case, the root is écol and in the other, just éco.

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