'Jour' is one of the first French words a child meets - it's there in 'bonjour' on the first morning of lessons. What most learners never see is how far it reaches: the same small word is there in 'journée', 'séjour' and 'toujours', hides in the '-di' of 'lundi' and 'mardi', and surfaces in the English 'journey' and 'journal'.
'Jour' descends from Latin. From 'dies' ('day') came the adjective 'diurnus' ('daily'), and from that the noun 'diurnum' - 'a day', and also the word for a daily ration and a day-book, the register of the day's business. Old French turned it into 'jorn', then 'jour', attested from the late 10th century, with both 'a day' and 'daylight' present in the Chanson de Roland around 1100. The same Latin root gave Italian 'giorno', Occitan and Catalan 'jorn', and - through Occitan - Spanish 'jornada'. 'Dies' itself never left French: it hides in the '-di' of 'lundi', 'mardi' and 'jeudi', and in the 'di' of 'midi', 'mid-day'.
One small extra, for anyone who likes this sort of thing: the French for 'today', 'aujourd'hui', carries 'day' twice over. It began as 'au jour de hui' - 'on the day of today' - and 'hui' itself came from Latin 'hodie', a squeeze of 'hoc die', 'on this day'. So the everyday word for 'today' has a 'day' on show in 'jour' and another buried inside 'hui'.
An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each: 'dies' and 'diurnum' in Latin, the day-family tree spreading across Europe, the hidden '-di' in the French days of the week, the French family ('journée', 'séjour', 'bonjour', 'toujours'), and the English cousins ('journey', 'journal')
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, with a date at each stage the record allows
A sources page listing where every claim comes from
A short guide for the adult on how to use the cards
The PDF prints two ways, and you choose which suits you. The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a single binder ring, so a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out in order. You print, laminate, trim and bind these yourself; the cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in sequence. The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page - print it and it's ready, no laminating or cutting - for the pencil case or the middle of a lesson. You'll need a printer; a laminator and a ring are needed only for the deck.
Because the large cards come apart, there's more to do with them than read. Shuffle the stage cards and rebuild the order. Deal them face-down and turn the timeline over one at a time. Hold up an English-cousin card - 'journey', 'journal' - and ask which part of the meaning it kept. Match a Latin stage to its modern word. If you own more than one word from L'atelier des mots, clip the English-cousin cards from several decks onto one ring and sort the cousins back to their roots. It's the same cards, talked through and handled differently - adult-led, a few minutes at a time, never a drill.
French vocabulary is often met as a list of separate words to memorise, and for a child with dyslexia or a stretched working memory, a list is the hard way to hold anything. 'Jour' is a good place to start, because it isn't one word - it's a doorway to a dozen. Once a learner sees that 'journée', 'séjour', 'toujours', the days of the week and even English 'journey' all turn on one small Latin root, a page of unrelated words becomes one connected family, and that's far easier to keep.
Designed first for my own son's French, but it suits a wider range:
Anyone who likes where words come from
French learners in Key Stages 3 and 4, and GCSE students meeting 'jour' and its family
Home-educated children
Learners who find vocabulary hard to hold when it's taught as isolated words - including dyslexic and working-memory profiles
Parents brushing up their own French, or studying alongside a child
Adults coming back to French after school
This isn't a first step into French. A learner should already be meeting words like 'jour', 'bonjour' and 'journée' in lessons or reading - the cards explain words a child is encountering, they don't introduce the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met these words at all yet, this will come too early.
Related resources
The same root, in the other shops: 'giorno' in L'Officina Radice (Italian) and 'jornada' in El Taller Raíz (Spanish) - the day-family runs through all three, so the sets belong together.
In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins - 'journey', 'journal', 'diurnal', 'sojourn' and 'adjourn' - each as its own word card.
Originally created to support my dyslexic son's learning once the school day had ended.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Available now as a PDF download.
'Jour' is one of the first French words a child meets - it's there in 'bonjour' on the first morning of lessons. What most learners never see is how far it reaches: the same small word is there in 'journée', 'séjour' and 'toujours', hides in the '-di' of 'lundi' and 'mardi', and surfaces in the English 'journey' and 'journal'.
'Jour' descends from Latin. From 'dies' ('day') came the adjective 'diurnus' ('daily'), and from that the noun 'diurnum' - 'a day', and also the word for a daily ration and a day-book, the register of the day's business. Old French turned it into 'jorn', then 'jour', attested from the late 10th century, with both 'a day' and 'daylight' present in the Chanson de Roland around 1100. The same Latin root gave Italian 'giorno', Occitan and Catalan 'jorn', and - through Occitan - Spanish 'jornada'. 'Dies' itself never left French: it hides in the '-di' of 'lundi', 'mardi' and 'jeudi', and in the 'di' of 'midi', 'mid-day'.
One small extra, for anyone who likes this sort of thing: the French for 'today', 'aujourd'hui', carries 'day' twice over. It began as 'au jour de hui' - 'on the day of today' - and 'hui' itself came from Latin 'hodie', a squeeze of 'hoc die', 'on this day'. So the everyday word for 'today' has a 'day' on show in 'jour' and another buried inside 'hui'.
An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each: 'dies' and 'diurnum' in Latin, the day-family tree spreading across Europe, the hidden '-di' in the French days of the week, the French family ('journée', 'séjour', 'bonjour', 'toujours'), and the English cousins ('journey', 'journal')
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, with a date at each stage the record allows
A sources page listing where every claim comes from
A short guide for the adult on how to use the cards
The PDF prints two ways, and you choose which suits you. The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a single binder ring, so a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out in order. You print, laminate, trim and bind these yourself; the cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in sequence. The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page - print it and it's ready, no laminating or cutting - for the pencil case or the middle of a lesson. You'll need a printer; a laminator and a ring are needed only for the deck.
Because the large cards come apart, there's more to do with them than read. Shuffle the stage cards and rebuild the order. Deal them face-down and turn the timeline over one at a time. Hold up an English-cousin card - 'journey', 'journal' - and ask which part of the meaning it kept. Match a Latin stage to its modern word. If you own more than one word from L'atelier des mots, clip the English-cousin cards from several decks onto one ring and sort the cousins back to their roots. It's the same cards, talked through and handled differently - adult-led, a few minutes at a time, never a drill.
French vocabulary is often met as a list of separate words to memorise, and for a child with dyslexia or a stretched working memory, a list is the hard way to hold anything. 'Jour' is a good place to start, because it isn't one word - it's a doorway to a dozen. Once a learner sees that 'journée', 'séjour', 'toujours', the days of the week and even English 'journey' all turn on one small Latin root, a page of unrelated words becomes one connected family, and that's far easier to keep.
Designed first for my own son's French, but it suits a wider range:
Anyone who likes where words come from
French learners in Key Stages 3 and 4, and GCSE students meeting 'jour' and its family
Home-educated children
Learners who find vocabulary hard to hold when it's taught as isolated words - including dyslexic and working-memory profiles
Parents brushing up their own French, or studying alongside a child
Adults coming back to French after school
This isn't a first step into French. A learner should already be meeting words like 'jour', 'bonjour' and 'journée' in lessons or reading - the cards explain words a child is encountering, they don't introduce the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met these words at all yet, this will come too early.
Related resources
The same root, in the other shops: 'giorno' in L'Officina Radice (Italian) and 'jornada' in El Taller Raíz (Spanish) - the day-family runs through all three, so the sets belong together.
In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins - 'journey', 'journal', 'diurnal', 'sojourn' and 'adjourn' - each as its own word card.
Originally created to support my dyslexic son's learning once the school day had ended.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Available now as a PDF download.
