{"id":898,"date":"2013-03-06T11:45:38","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T10:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=898"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:18:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:18:38","slug":"beware-false-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/beware-false-friends","title":{"rendered":"Beware false friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Learning a new language is a great experience: familiarising yourself with a new culture, discovering a new way to express yourself, and hopefully enabling yourself to order a beer in one more country. However, as a language-learner, you also need to be aware of the pitfalls that await you. The dreaded \u2018false friends\u2019 that lurk within every language, waiting to trip up the unsuspecting learner.<\/p>\n

So what, you may ask, is a \u2018false friend\u2019?\u00a0 Well, would any non-Spanish speakers care to hazard a guess as to what decepci<\/em>\u00f3n <\/em>means? Bizarro? <\/em>An \u00e9xito? <\/em>Or even the verb pretender?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Don't<\/a>Ok, I\u2019ll admit, one of the great things about learning Spanish<\/a> is how often you can put an \u2018o\u2019 or an \u2018a\u2019 on an English word and get a Spanish one \u2013 dentista<\/em>, artista<\/em>, famoso<\/em>, precioso<\/em>\u2026 However, unfortunately for us English speakers, it doesn\u2019t always work.<\/p>\n

Rather than meaning deception, decepci<\/em>\u00f3n <\/em>is actually a disappointment; bizarro <\/em>is not bizarre, but brave; un \u00e9xito <\/em>is a success, not an exit; and pretender <\/em>does not mean to pretend, but to try. It may be quite embarrassing to make a mistake like this,\u00a0 but resist the urge to describe yourself as embarazada \u2013 <\/em>it actually means you\u2019re pregnant!<\/p>\n

German<\/a> is just as bad. \u00a0The Chef <\/em>doesn\u2019t cook (they\u2019re the boss), someone brav <\/em>may well be a coward (brav actually means nice\/good), and, as many Brits have found out the hard way, asking for the Men\u00fc<\/em> won\u2019t get the waiter to bring you a list of available meals (they will probably bring you the day\u2019s set meal).\u00a0 If you\u2019re ordering food, also watch out for pepperoni \u2013 <\/em>I\u2019ve seen many a disappointed face when someone realises they\u2019ve ordered a little green pepper instead of a salami pizza; and expect a funny look if you ask for a Rezept <\/em>in a shop \u2013 this is a recipe not a receipt!<\/p>\n

False friends, generally speaking, are words in another language that sound deceptively like a word in your language. Many a learner has found themself hazarding an (incorrect) guess as to the meaning of a word on the basis of its seeming familiarity, and sometimes when grasping for a word you can\u2019t quite remember, you end up with something that sounds right, but unfortunately isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re thinking of learning a new language though, please don\u2019t be put off<\/a> by these examples! False friends are just one of the many interesting things about learning a new language, even if they can occasionally lead to misunderstandings. There is definitely no need to be embarrassed about making a mistake, as that is the best way to learn, and most native speakers will find it funny, rather than annoying.<\/p>\n

If anyone else has any weird or funny examples of false friends they\u2019ve encountered when learning another language, please share them with us!<\/p>\n

Alex<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learning a new language is a great experience: familiarising yourself with a new culture, discovering a new way to express…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[244,3,9,97],"tags":[242,243,2,245,8],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learn-german","category-languagelearning","category-learn-spanish","category-tips","tag-embarrassed","tag-german","tag-language","tag-mistake","tag-spanish"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":898},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":244,"label":"German"},{"value":3,"label":"Language Learning"},{"value":9,"label":"Spanish"},{"value":97,"label":"Tips"}],"post_tag":[{"value":242,"label":"embarrassed"},{"value":243,"label":"German"},{"value":2,"label":"language"},{"value":245,"label":"mistake"},{"value":8,"label":"Spanish"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Howeson","author_link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/author\/richard"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":244,"name":"German","slug":"learn-german","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":244,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":32,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":244,"category_count":32,"category_description":"","cat_name":"German","category_nicename":"learn-german","category_parent":0},{"term_id":3,"name":"Language Learning","slug":"languagelearning","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":254,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":254,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Language Learning","category_nicename":"languagelearning","category_parent":0},{"term_id":9,"name":"Spanish","slug":"learn-spanish","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":9,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":32,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":9,"category_count":32,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Spanish","category_nicename":"learn-spanish","category_parent":0},{"term_id":97,"name":"Tips","slug":"tips","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":97,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":86,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":97,"category_count":86,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Tips","category_nicename":"tips","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":242,"name":"embarrassed","slug":"embarrassed","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":242,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":243,"name":"German","slug":"german","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":243,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":26,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":2,"name":"language","slug":"language","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":86,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":245,"name":"mistake","slug":"mistake","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":245,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":8,"name":"Spanish","slug":"spanish","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":8,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":43,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10627,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/10627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}