'ion' in french and english

[myron21]

Somebody told me that every word that ends in 'ion' is the same in english and french eg 'introspection, amalgamation, impersonation' etc etc, is this true/

[bernardo]

Mostly yes, although I guess that there are numerous exceptions. This is a version of an anecdote which I read about ages ago. A Portuguese soldier in WW2 won a bet by proving that he could teach a thousand words of Portuguese to a French soldier in leess than a minute. His answer was that every French word ending in "-tion" is the same in Portuguese except with "-ção" instead of "-tion". The same would be true of Italian -zione, Spanish -cion, Esperanto -cio etc. but with numerous euphonic and orthographical changes.

[darth vader]

how do you pronounce cao? what's the name of the place (in portuguese) where trains stop? a stacao?

[bernardo]

Like "sow" as in plough, but nasally (hence the squiggly nasal thing on the a)

[Segilla]

Did you know that almost all French words ending -ion are feminine?
One exception is le million.
If there's anyone out there who doesn't know how to detect the gender of many, many French nouns; l'll post the answer.