False friends
From UniLang Wiki
When learning a foreign language, you might encounter a word that looks like a word you know from your native language, but it has a completely different meaning. These two words are false friends or false cognates.
Since this depends strongly on the pair of languages, we have started a little list:
- English-German false friends
- Faroese-Danish/Dutch/English/German
- Portuguese-English false friends
- Scandinavian false friends (Norwegian/Swedish/Danish)
- Dutch-German false friends
- English-Swedish false friends
- English-Spanish false friends
- English-Italian false friends
- Portuguese-Spanish false friends
Some extreme false friends in other languages:
- Cantonese "paeng" = cheap, Thai "paeng" = expensive
- Czech and colloquial German "ne" = no, Greek "ne" = yes
- Finnish "katson merta" = I watch the sea, Italian "cazzo merda" is quite vulgar...
- German "kalt" = cold, Italian "caldo" = warm/hot
- colloquial Polish and Czech "no" = yes
- Polish "Zapomnij!" = Forget it, Russian "???????!" = Remember
- Portuguese "puxe"(sounds like "push") = pull
- English "concurrence" = co-operation, Polish "konkurencja" = rivalry
- Norwegian "grine" = weep, Danish "grine" = laugh
- Italian "burro" = butter, Spanish "burro" = donkey
- Italian "aceto" = vinegar, Spanish "aceite" = oil
- English "air"= air, Indonesian "air"= water
- English "into" = (prep.) Zulu "into" = thing
- English "room" = room, Afrikaans "room" = creme
- Spanish "tarde" = afternoon, later, midday (time) Wolof "tarde" = to be late, to miss (verb)
- English "wine" = (alcoholic drink from grapes) Delaware/Lenape "wine" = it is snowing
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