False friends

False friends are a lot of fun. And of course I don’t mean people who pretend to be your friend but really are not. You probably know that I mean words or phrases that are confusing because they look similar and yet have different meanings in different languages...

My personal favourite of all time is ‘abogado’ in Spanish.  I thought this means ‘avocado’ in English, but in fact it means ‘lawyer’. And so it happened that I once went into a Spanish supermarket and asked if I could buy a lawyer. True story.

Equally, if you tell someone that you are ‘embarazada’, let’s hope that you are pregnant and you are not just trying to say that you’re embarrassed about something!

What about English to French false friends? Well, some of the most common are the following:

• Eventually – Meaning after a long period of time, whereas in French ‘éventuellement’ means ‘possibly’ or ‘if necessary’.

So the phrase ‘We will do that eventually’ does not mean we will possibly do that, but we will do that, given time.

• Important – In English, this means something that is of great significance or high priority. It cannot mean ‘big’. However in French, the word ‘important’ can indeed mean something big, or of great significance/high priority.

Which means that the phrase ‘It’s an important country’ does not mean it is a big country, but that the country is of great significance in some way.

• Sensible – In English, having or showing good sense. However, in French, this word means ‘sensitive’. Every now and again I hear someone saying that they are sensible, when really they mean that they are sensitive. Although of course you can be both sensible and sensitive too…

And English to Dutch? Well, a couple of words that have already confused me are ‘mening’, which means ‘opinion’, not ‘meaning’; ‘want’ meaning ‘because’; ‘wil’ meaning ‘want’… Agh, no wonder I’m finding it difficult to learn Dutch! Or… is it just that I’m simply experiencing exactly what my students feel when they’re learning English?!

Do you have a story to tell about a time you used a false friend with a different meaning than you thought? If so, please share it in the comments below!