Funny false friends

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In fact, the proper translation of Spanish sensible into English is sensitive, and vice-versa.

Something Peacesells said on the dreaded "Love and Dating" forum reminded me that Spanish speakers not knowing who Catiline was will mistake Catilina for a pet form of the female given name Catalina (possibly made from the shortened form Cati, which, incidentally, is pronounced much like the English adjective catty indeed) and, on the Internet, they will ask why on Earth you use it as a nickname if you're male.

English shiny and Esperanto ŝajni (‘to seem’). Pronounced as closely as both languages’ phonetics allow.

English foreign and Esperanto foren ('far away', only as a direction of motion). Again, pronounced as closely as phonetics allows, but there are no reduced vowels in Esperanto, so the e is as vivid as the o, despite being unstressed; and the preferred r is a tap, flap or trill.

(No argument or dispute,
Far away proceeds the stroll,
In a train compartment or a ship cabin,
Beyond the mounts, up to a harbor.)

They are related. The latter is the accusative of fore ('far away', only as a place), made by attaching the adverbial ending -e to the root for ('away'), borrowed from Latin foras ('outside'); this word was derived in Vulgar Latin to make foranus, which, via Old French, entered English yielding foreign. The regularity of Esperanto allows this derivation to be reproduced: forano means 'someone from away'.

Surprisingly enough, Esperanto ŝajni is related to English shiny, too: it comes from German scheinen, which is a cognate to English shine, but it can also mean 'to seem'.

Dean: English name or word
Din: Norwegian, pronounced like Dean, means your, yours

English infancy, Spanish infancia and Portuguese infância (the last two mean 'childhood').

Swedish fria ('free', absolute singular definite or plural), Spanish fría and Portuguese fria (the last two mean 'cold', feminine singular).

English bottom, Korean battang/바탕/ - base, ground

English bar, Korean bal - something that prevents from entering

The Japanese word "nami" (pronouced "nah-me") means "name".

A thousand years ago all of the words in English that have silent e's on the end had those e's actually pronounced. So a thousand years ago the English word probably sounded even more similar to the modern Japanese word than it does now!

In Chinese the word for "royal court" (and by extension: "capital city") is similar to the English word for a male monarch (who would preside over a royal court). Which (depending upon the Chinese dialect, and upon who translates) is often rendered as "king".

Various cities in China have served as either national capitals, or breakaway regional capitals: hense city names like: Peking/Beijing: "northern capital/court", Nanking: "southern court/capital), and Chungking:"central capital/court".

English matter and Spanish madre ('mother'). Bizarre though it may seem at first, they are related: the latter just evolved from Latin mater preserving its meaning, while the former comes, via French, from Latin materia ('matter, stuff, material'), derived from mater. The word materia exists in Spanish as a learnèd borrowing from Latin, with roughly the same meaning as English matter (though, if you mean 'subject, affair, topic', you should instead use a word like asunto, cuestión or tema), and it forms a doublet with the natively evolved word madera, which, oddly enough, means 'wood' (as in 'tree meat', not 'forest').

By the way, Spanish cuestión and tema are cognates to English question and theme, respectively, and they're certainly false friends as far as their most usual senses are concerned.

While we're at it, the same happens with portuguese questão and tema, which do mean the same as their Spanish cognates. Also, ...

Esperanto temi ('to be about, to talk about, to refer to a certain topic') and Spanish and Portuguese temer ('to fear'). The Esperanto word is the lexeme of the noun temo ('topic, subject, matter') attached to the infinitive ending -i. This root ultimately comes from the same Greek word as English theme and its Spanish and Portuguese cognates.

Esperanto strangulo ('strange one, strange person'), English strangle and Spanish and Portuguese estrangulo ('[I] strangle').

English pain and French pain ('bread').

The English idiom pain in the ass must be quite funny to French speakers.

English rotten and Spanish roto ('broken').

English grape and Spanish grapa ('staple, wire fastener').

English juice and Spanish juicio ('judgement' or 'trial').

So juicio de grapa roto means 'broken judgement by a staple'. There's no ambiguity about what is broken, because roto is agreeing in gender with juicio (masculine), and not with grapa (feminine). Juicio de grapa rota would mean 'judgement by a broken staple'.

By the way, vino can mean both 'wine' and '[he/she/it] came'.

Esperanto reiri ('to go back') and Spanish reír ('to laugh').

Esperanto suden ('south[wards]', as a direction of motion) and Spanish suden ('[that they] sweat' or '[may they] sweat', present subjunctive, or 'sweat', imperative to more than one listener when one addresses them as ustedes).

In Portuguese, falo inglês, falo espanhol, falo português, etc., usually mean and are readily understood as 'I speak English', 'I speak Spanish', 'I speak Portuguese' and so on, although, technically, they can also mean 'English phallus', 'Spanish phallus', 'Portuguese phallus', etc. Only a context incompatible with the former meaning would make the phrase likely to be interpreted in the latter sense. In Spanish, however, falo inglés, falo español, falo portugués, etc., mean unambiguously 'English phallus', 'Spanish phallus', 'Portuguese phallus', etc. In Esperanto, falo angla, falo hispana, falo portugala, etc., mean 'English fall' (noun phrase), 'Spanish fall', 'Portuguese fall', etc.