Comments on: False Friends

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:19:28 +0000

Americans do use alternate in the 'British' sense; the much-bemoaned alternate side of the street parking regulations of New York City forbid parking during certain hours of the day on the north (or east) side of a street if it is Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, and on the south (or west) side if it is Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, so that that side of the street may be cleaned. (Sundays are free for both parkers and street cleaners.)

By: NG

NG — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:15:30 +0000

Just makes me think how much English tries to trip up those learning it for the first time. The questions brought to me by our ESL students at Washington Academy of Languages confound me all the time, and I’m supposed to know my own language!

By: Athel Cornish-Bowden

Athel Cornish-Bowden — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:49:38 +0000

There are also true friends that are unknown to native speakers. A favourite word of Spanish speakers when writing English is obtention, which they think ought to be the English for obtención, and is formed in a perfectly regular way by adding -tion to obtain. The careful Spanish speaker may decide to check by looking it up in a dictionary such as the Shorter OED, and there it is, with exactly the meaning it ought to have, and nothing to say that it is rare or obsolete. The only problem is that most native speakers have never come across this word in their lives (unless they read text written by Spanish speakers) and would be prepared to swear that it doesn't exist.

By: RNB

RNB — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:17:19 +0000

Consume. English to French.

Not strictly an example of a “false friend”, but close enough for misunderstanding

(sorry for link in a comment, but it explains the above)

http://ranaban.blogspot.com/2007/08/ce-soir.html

By: syz

syz — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:43:02 +0000

False friends — love the category.

In Mandarin, “OK” has been borrowed into a usage rather different from what it gets in the US. If I ask a Beijinger how the Olympics were, he’s likely to say “OK” with great enthusiasm, meaning something like “fantastic!”

I have tried mostly without success to convince my native Mandarin-speaking friends that it means something more like “acceptable” in English, but the only effect has been to convince them that I know nothing about my native language.