Choosing a traveling partner is always a risky business. You think you know someone well, but one innocent trip to France and the friend you trusted turns into a whole different person that you, somehow, can’t relate to anymore.
Well, be prepared: languages have their own false friends (faux amis), who will reveal their true deceptive nature at the airport arrivals.
Take library for example. With its reassuring smell of old books,the piece and quiet it offers you, the good nature of its public service status…it’s decided, you’ve picked library as a travel companion. You reach France, and just as it’s ok for you to wear clothes you would never wear back home, it would seem natural for library to put on a French accent and become “Librairie”. Looking for your holiday friend and putting on your best accent, you politely ask : “où se trouve la librairie ?”. But when you get there, something has changed. The shinny new books don’t smell so good, there’s music playing, people talk at normal volume and instead of presenting a membership card, visitors are..what ? Paying ?!
That’s right, you’re in a book shop. Here in France, your beloved library is called “bibliothèque”. The mask has fallen and you are faced with the harsh truth: “Librairie” is a false friend. False friends are words that look or sound identical in both languages but have different meanings.
This is often due to the historical “borrowing” of words from one language to the other due to the fact that many various peoples occupied or shared the country at one point or another. The original meaning of the borrowed word is sometimes slightly altered by their adoptive language and, as such, may be described as lost in translation. The latin base Librarium from which both Library and Librairie originate actually means “bookcase, chest for books”. But from the 16th century, in French, as well as in Spanish and Portuguese, the latin base evolved into words meaning “bookshop”. There, now you know.Â
Let’s dig a little deeper for a moment: false friends are often also called false cognates, but there is a distinction to be made. False or true friends are terms that relate to the modern meaning of words. False or true cognates refer to the etymology or origin of words. False cognates are words that are similar in their modern forms despite having different etymologies. The common misconception is to think that all false friends are false cognates. Take smoking for example. Smoking is used in French to refer to a tuxedo. It was borrowed from the English language around 1890 to designate a “vest à fumer” or “smoking-jacket” in fashion. (Because, in French, adjectives come after the noun, “smoking-jacket” was abbreviated not to “jacket” but to “smoking”). In this case, although their modern uses differ, both words originate from the same root. False friends, true cognates. Are you still with me ?
So although you have many true friends in the French language (adorable, capable, certain, final, irritable…there are thousands of them !), you will need to learn about those you can’t count on. I could try and give you a comprehensive list of all false friends you’ll need to watch out for, but I’d like you to come back. So instead I will just give you a few common ones and some I have encountered myself, often leading to utter confusion and/or hilarious misunderstandings.:
- Actual ≠ Actuel (=current, present)
- Sensible ≠ Sensible (=sensitive)
- Money ≠Monnaie : (= change – you can have “money” even if you have no “monnaie”…)
- Preservative ≠ Préservatif (= condom)
- Tissue ≠Tissu : (= fabric)
- Vest≠Veste (= jacket)
- Eventually≠Éventuellement (= possibly, if necessary)
- Definitely ≠ Définitivement (= definitively)
For more common false friends, you can check out this page, which also gives you a list of common “semi-false friends” (a sort of intermittent bad friend who only occasionally lets you down).
Be safe…
Katell Sevellec 