False Friends I

When it comes to learning a language, often one is faced with words that sound alike and have similar meanings, but then their usage should not be confused.

If, for example, I am going to have a show I will use that word instead of “manifestation”. This is challenging for the Italian immigrant wanting to express himself in English using the same word but putting an Anglophone twist to it. So he might say, “I saw a manifestation” instead of I saw a show. “Manifestazione” means show in the Italian but of course manifestation means an appearance of the other-worldly kind, as when a spirit manifests itself by causing a draft of wind in English.

That was one of the earliest false friends I can remember having worked between the Italian and English.

Another would come up often if the Italian wanted to say someone was nice. He would try the same substitution from his one language and say that the person was “sympathetic”. That would be because in his own language, “simpatico” refers to a person being nice.

There are plenty of false friends out there to confuse the learner who hears the English word; and because he is likely to translate those words into his own language, he will have difficulty accepting the new meaning. Similarly when the French student tells me to “remember” him something instead of “remind” him of something, it is likely that the confusion is due to the presence of the French verb, rappeler in both those instances. “Me fait rappeler” means “remind me” and “je me rappele que” means “I remember that”.

Of course he might remember something I would remind him of. Here we do not have false friends but the student is translating the English words literally without the knowledge that often enough the English will have fewer words to express a concept which would require more words in the foreign language.