FALSE FRIENDS-by Elisa Campos

FALSE FRIENDS

During our prom trip we went through the west of Spain towards Portugal, in Portugal we visited Coimbra and Lisbon.

During a walk in Coimbra we came across a guy that had drunk more than he should have. He started talking nonsense and  the students  became very agitated as he had been following a couple of students and he wouldn’t stay away from all of us. We kept on calling him “borracho” and he didn’t seem to care, in fact, he is very pleased with the compliment! As soon as the teachers arrived we headed back to the buses but the guy kept on following us. In the end nothing happened and everyone was back in the buses, a little scared but nothing else.

The following day while we were visiting Lisbon our tour guide told us that “borracho” in Portuguese means pretty or nice, something very different of what it means in Spanish.

So…. Ok, that had been it!!! The drunk guy had been thinking that we were calling him handsome all the time he was chasing us!!

She also told other words that have completely different meanings like “esquisito” which means weird or “espantoso” which means marvellous.

So this takes me to the topic I want to introduce to you today: false friends.

 False friends exist in almost every language. I’ve done some research and I’ve been able to find a few that could be interesting.

The proper definition is:

False friends are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects (or letters   in two alphabets) that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning.

Some false friends for English-Spanish are:

Constipated – constipado:   you never want to go into a chemist saying you want something for your constipation if your problem is that you have a cold, because they will give you something to help you evacuate in the toilet, as constipated means “estreñido”.

Bland – blando: very similar words yes, but the meaning couldn’t be more different. Bland means “soso” while “blando” means soft in English.

Embarrassed – embarazada: another very common mistake, embarrassed means to be ashamed of something and “embarazada” means pregnant.

Fabric – fábrica: fabric, as weird as it seems means “tela” and fábrica means factory.

Remove – remover: there was an English friend in our family  that complained he could never make instant soups. That was because when he read the instructions in Spanish and saw “remover” he thought it was to remove, and remove means “quitar” so he would remove the pan from the stove.

Library – libreria: if you go to an English speaking country and ask were the library is you will find yourself in the “biblioteca”, libreria is a book store or a book shop.

Mascara ­– Máscara: same word apparently, the only little difference is that little diacritical mark on the first “a”. but mascara in English is actually a type of eye make-up, in spanish “rimel” and “máscara” is a mask.