False friends

By Anna Sobell

A False Friend is a word that looks or sounds similar in two languages, but has a completely different meaning; so, can cause all kinds of confusion! As a learner, it’s good to be aware of these so that you’re not left red-faced at a business meeting when a False Friend appears. Equally, it’s important for trainers to cover these words with their business language learners.

Picture the English man on a business trip in Sweden. When asked for his leg, he obediently elevates his right leg only to discover, to his great embarrassment, that ‘leg’ means ‘ID papers’ in Swedish!

And then there was the Spanish businessman who exclaimed during a presentation to prospective clients, “I can’t see a thing without my lentils!” He’d had an unfortunate mishap with his contact lenses just before stepping up to the mic. Little did he know that his day was going from bad to worse as he’d confused the false friend, ‘lentils’ and ‘lentillas’. The latter means contact lenses in Spanish, the former meaning the healthy pulse found in lots of vegetarian recipes!

What makes matters worse is that this wasn’t his first encounter with a false friend at a most inconvenient time. He once stated very proudly in a meeting that his report had been placed safely inside his carpet. Looks of confusion spread around the room until one of his colleagues helpfully pointed out that ‘carpeta’ in Spanish means ‘folder’ in English!

So, to make sure you know your carpetas from your carpets, see if you can match up the False Friends below with their actual meanings!

(answers at the bottom of this blog post)

Teaching tips!

A fun and more memorable activity to highlight and check understanding of false friends, is to play a miming game where the learner chooses one of the words above (or any other false friends) and mimes the meaning out for other learners (or the teacher) to guess. You can add a competitive element by putting the learners into 2 groups.

With a one-to-one course, write some seemingly simple sentences (all of which must include appropriate false friends) on the board and ask the learner to be prepared to explain the meaning of the sentence. Explain that the learner has an imaginary budget of £100. For each sentence, the learner should then put a ‘bet’ on, according to how confident they are of the meaning. They should write their chosen figure (£1, £5, £10, whatever they select) next to the sentence. Once this is done, the teacher can reveal the true meaning of the sentences. If the learner is right, they win the bet, if they are wrong they lose the money! Monopoly money could even be used as a prop for this activity!

Over to you!

What false friends exist in your native language? How would you teach them?

(Answers: 1.b, 2.f, 3.c. 4.e, 5.d, 6a)