Funny false friends

Post Reply New Topic

For example …

English grief and Spanish grifo (an everyday word meaning ‘tap, faucet’, but also used with its original meaning of ‘gryphon’).

English despair and Spanish disparar (‘to shoot’).

English constipated and Spanish constipado (‘having a cold’).

Portuguese pelos meados (‘about the middle [of a time lapse]’) and Spanish pelos meados (‘pissed-upon hairs’).

Portuguese polvo (‘octopus’) and Spanish polvo (‘dust’, but also slang for ‘sexual intercourse’ in Spain).

Portuguese correr (‘to run’), when pronounced by a Brazilian, and Spanish coger (‘to take’, but also ‘to have a f***’ in Argentina).

English embarrassed and Spanish embarazada ( pregnant).

English corn flake and Spanish cuerno flaco (‘thin horn’).

English luxury and Spanish lujuria (‘lust’).

Kok is Dutch for cook.
Protip, if you're a Dutch speaker and you visit a restaurant in England: do not thank the kok for your delicious meal...

Why sometimes the wrong word comes to mind:

Swedish "tårta" means "cake", not "tart"
Swedish "fart" means "speed"
Swedish "gift" means "married" or "poison"
Swedish "rolig" means "funny, amusing", Danish "rolig" means "calm"
Swedish "prick" means "dot"
Swedish "kinkig" means "fussy, petulant", not "kinky"
Swedish "recept" means "recipe" or "prescription". But never "receipt".
Swedish "vrist" means "ankle", not "wrist"
Italian "caldo" means "warm"

And Jerk and Jerker are good old Swedish names (forms of Erik). So when you meet someone with this name, don't laugh! We don't laugh at the names Pitt and Pippa. Of course, we pronounce J as Y, would Yerk and Yerker go unnoticed?

The Latin sentence Māter tua māla burra ēst (?Your mother eats red apples?) sounds to a Spanish speaker very much like Tu madre es una mala burra (literally ?Your mother is a bad donkey?, but burro, -a [?donkey?] is used figuratively to mean an ignorant or stupid person). It gets better with Māter tua māla puta ēst (which seems to mean ?Your mother eats pure apples?, according to Wiktionary, but I?m not sure), similarly reminiscent of Spanish Tu madre es una mala puta (?Your mother is a bad whore?).

Since Latin was never customarily spelt with macrons in all the centuries in which it was widely used as a vehicle of culture, I suspect people would tend to avoid words like māla (?apples?) and ēst (?[he/she/it] eats?) in contexts where they could be confused with mala (?bad?) and est (?[he/she/it] is?), at least in writing. These two sentences are nonetheless fairly well known in Spanish-speaking countries and sometimes used by Latin teachers to shock their students.

Esperanto Homo longe penis means ?A person endeavored for a long time?.

Esperanto varma pano (?warm bread?) and Finnish varma pano (?certain f*ck?).
Esperanto kulo de puto (?well gnat?) and Spanish culo de puto (?male whore?s ass?, or ?fa***t?s ass?, depending on dialect).

English "trainee"= someone in training

French "trainee"= a slut or a prostitute

English 'gift' = a present
German 'gift' = poison

English 'Billion' = 1,000,000,000, one thousand millions
German 'Billion' - 1,000,000,000,000, a trillion, or one thousand billions

In Italian autista means driver.

But wait:

Isn't the US "billion" the UK "milliard?" A "milliard," apparently, is 1,000 million

Therefore the UK "billion" would be the same as the German "billion."

A "milliard," I just found out, is the "long scale" term for "billion."

Constipado

In Engish- constipated

In Spanish- common cold

Nevermind I just realized the OP had already said it.