25. False Friends: When Words Lie

Star-Spangled Stories. Article 25.

False Friends: When Words Lie

Why a word that looks Czech can mean something completely different, how these "false friends" are born and how to defend yourself before they land you in an embarrassing situation.

A Czech student writes to an American friend: My chef is very sympathetic and the actual problem will be solved eventually. Grammatically, the sentence is fine. But the friend reads that the student works for a sympathetic – that is, compassionate – cook, and that the real problem will be solved at some point in the end. What the student wanted to say was that their boss is nice and that the current problem may possibly be solved.

Each of the words chef, sympathetic, actual and eventually looks like a Czech word we know well (šéf, sympatický, aktuální, eventuálně). And each one means something different. Linguists call such words false friends (falešní přátelé). They are words that look or sound similar in both languages but have different meanings. They are among the most treacherous traps, because students do not see them as a problem at all. We look up an unknown word in a dictionary. Nobody thinks of checking a word they "know".

Where the name "false friends" comes from

The term was invented by two French teachers of English, Maxime Koessler and Jules Derocquigny. In 1928 they published the book Les faux amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais, "False friends, or the betrayals of English vocabulary". The French had the same problem with English as we do: a huge number of similar words, some of which turn out to be traitors. The French faux amis was then translated literally into English as false friends and into Czech as "falešní přátelé".

Specialists also talk about interlingual homonyms. But for teachers and students the figurative name is more fitting: the word pretends to be a friend who will help you, and then it trips you up.

How false friends are born

Most of them have a common ancestor, usually in Latin or Greek. The word once made its way into both English and Czech (often through German or French), but then it lived its own life in each language. Its meaning shifted, narrowed or widened in a different direction.

A good example is Latin actualis, "real, active". English kept the meaning "real": the actual price is the real price. German turned it into aktuell in the sense of "current, happening now", and Czech took over this meaning: aktuální zprávy (the latest news). So the two words are related, but they talk about different things. The Czech "aktuální" price is the current price in English.

The word gymnázium went the same way. Greek gymnasion was a place where young men exercised naked (Greek gymnos = naked). But Greek philosophers also taught there, so in German and then in Czech gymnázium means a selective secondary school. English kept the original, sporting meaning: a gymnasium, or gym for short, is a sports hall or a fitness centre. So if you tell an American I study at a gymnasium, they will think you do your studying at the gym.

The big five to watch out for

Some words cause Czech students trouble so often that English teachers know them by heart. These five appear in school essays, emails and the maturita exam:

The word control deserves a special note. English to control means to have power over something: control the car (ovládat auto), control your anger (ovládnout vztek), the government controls the media (vláda ovládá média). But Czech "kontrola" is mostly checking: a teacher checks homework, an inspector checks tickets. In English that is check: The teacher checks our homework. Exceptions are fixed phrases like passport control (pasová kontrola) or quality control (kontrola kvality). That is why the word is so easy to mix up.

And sympathetic? When something sad happens to you, a sympathetic friend listens and comforts you. A "sympatický" person in the Czech sense is nice, likable or friendly in English. If you write about a new classmate He is very sympathetic, the reader will understand that he feels deeply for your troubles, not that he is a nice guy.

A small atlas of false friends

Besides the big five, there are dozens of other pairs. Some are just confusing; others can be embarrassing. Here is a selection of the ones a Czech student meets most often:

Some pairs look innocent at first sight but can land you in a comic situation. Anyone in an American grocery store who eagerly looks for food without preservatives is fine: they are looking for products without added chemicals. But anyone who asks for a preservative at a pharmacy will probably get a puzzled look.

School and student life

Several false friends are directly connected with school, so it is useful to know them before you write about your studies:

Be especially careful with the word college. In American English it is commonly used for university studies in general: She goes to college means "she is at university". The Czech kolej, where students live, is a dorm. And the Czech brigáda? That would frighten an American. I had a brigade last summer sounds as if you commanded a military unit last summer.

Miliarda or bilion? When even numbers get mixed up

False friends do not hide only in words, but in numbers too. English billion means a miliarda (1,000,000,000), not the Czech bilion. The Czech bilion is a million millions (1,000,000,000,000), which is trillion in English.

The difference comes from two different systems of naming large numbers. Czech and most of continental Europe use the so-called long scale (milion, miliarda, bilion, biliarda). The United States uses the short scale, in which each new name appears after a thousandfold step (million, billion, trillion). Britain used the long scale for a long time, just like us. But in 1974 the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that official statistics would use the American meaning of the word billion, and today the whole English-speaking world uses it.

When words only half lie

Some words are not completely false, only half false. They share a main meaning, but in one of the languages they have an extra meaning, or they are used more or less widely. These may be even more treacherous cases.

English affair can mean a scandal (aféra), but most often it means "matter" (foreign affairs = zahraniční záležitosti) or a love affair. Czech extravagantní means eccentric; English extravagant mainly means wasteful, spending too much. English sensible is not "senzibilní" (sensitive), but "reasonable, practical": sensible shoes are comfortable shoes, not sensitive ones. And smoking? In Czech it is a formal suit; in English it is just smoking. In America, the suit is called a tuxedo, informally a tux.

American English has a few more small traps: Czech benzín is gas in the USA (short for gasoline), mobil is a cell phone, lunapark is an amusement park and dálnice is a highway or freeway.

True friends: good news to finish with

It would be wrong to say that all similar words are suspicious. On the contrary: the vast majority of international words are true friends (true friends, or technically cognates). Hotel, taxi, information, problem, music, telephone, chocolate or university mean the same in both languages. Thanks to them, Czech and English share thousands of words, and reading a specialist English text is much easier for a Czech student than it might seem.

So the problem is not the similarity itself, but automatic trust. That is why we recommend three simple habits:

1. Context. When a sentence with a "familiar" word does not make sense, it is a signal that you have met a false friend.

2. An English–English dictionary. For words that look like Czech, check the meaning in an English learner's dictionary at least once. Our vocabulary for the maturita topics will help too.

3. Your own list. Write false friends down separately, always with a whole sentence, for example I'm sorry, the actual price is higher. You will remember them much better than isolated words.

Conclusion: friends it pays not to trust

False friends prove that words have lives of their own. They grew from the same roots but developed differently in each language, like brothers and sisters who moved to different countries. When you learn to recognize them, you not only avoid mistakes but also understand the history of both languages better.

And next time you write an email, try to find all the words that look "a little too Czech". You may discover another false friend among them.