Language Similarities

While I have been here, I have really started to notice the extent of similarities between a lot of French and English words. Most people who have studied some French will have noticed that many words in French are pretty much the same as the English version with a different ending, an accent somewhere or simply with a different pronunciation. I am always jealous of the people who come from more "latin" countries like Italy, Spain, etc. because they seem to have an easy time picking up French and with a less noticeable foreign accent. But having made friends with people from many different countries here has helped me to appreciate some of the benefits of having English as a first language when learning French. There have been many times when someone will ask about a word in class, that to me is so obvious because it is practically the same thing in English. I think that a lot of anglophones take this fact for granted.