They creep in the dead of night. Slither past in the shadows of day. They show their ugly head at the most inopportune moment. What are they? False cognates or what we refer to as false friends.
I have a perfect story that will help drive home what these are to you. Years ago when I was in high school Spanish class, our teacher, Doña (as she liked to be referred), relayed a true story about when she studied for a year in Spain. She lived with a host family as most foreign exchange students do. In her family, it was customary to have dinner together as a family. This time was for people to discuss their day, talk about their plans for the coming days, etc. During one story, she was trying to say how embarrassed she became by uttering the words “Estaba embarazada.”
Boy, did it get quiet around the dinner table. The host mom starts off very upset and begins raising her voice with lots of hand gestures. As any American in a new country could relate, nothing made any sense. Finally after the commotion settled down, she caught on that embarazada meant that she had gotten herself pregnant. Of course, her host mom was worried and upset that Doña had been so careless under her care. When she clarified things, they all had a good laugh about it, but it drove home the point that not every word in Spanish has a similar meaning in English and vice versa.
Now this story is not verbatim as my memory is not all that great when it comes to stories that old. But it does serve to demonstrate that you need to be careful with words in Spanish. Now there are a lot of Latinos in the U.S. who have blended English and Spanish to create Spanglish words. These are mixture of Spanish-sounding words that are close to how the English word is and means the same thing. El carro to mean the car is a good example. Over many years of use, this is now the meaning in Spanish.
Another good example is the Spanish word billón and the English word for billion. In Spanish, billón actually is a trillion. There are many words like this in Spanish and I won’t bore you by putting them in this blog posting, but I will refer you to a few sites that have good comparisons. Feel free to study these words and lock in those meanings. You never know when you’ll need to compromise and keep saying that you want to promise instead. Here are some of those websites:
Have any of you come across or encountered false friends? Do you know anyone who has? Please comment below and share your story. Don't worry. We all make these mistakes when learning a new language. Have fun with it and help others learn from our mistakes.
¡Hasta luego!
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