The influence of L2 English on the acquisition of L3 Italian in Hungarian high schools

1. Introduction

Cross-linguistic influence is a psycholinguistic phenomenon that affects the

progression and development of a language learner’s interlanguage. When studying a second
language (L2), the only possible source of interference is the mother-tongue (L1). However,
when an individual starts to learn a third foreign language (L3), the linguistic pattern becomes
more varied, with more sources of cross-linguistic transfer.
There can be visible instances of transfer in all aspects of language use, including
phonology (different accents and pronunciations), lexis (false friends), morphosyntax
(differences in word order), but the extra-linguistic (speech volume, non-verbal
communication) and sociopragmatic (time and space perception, politeness) aspects can also
be considered a form of cross-linguistic or “cross-cultural” interference.
This paper tends to investigate the lexical aspect of the aforementioned phenomenon,
its manifestation in the interlingua of Hungarian learners, focusing on the presence of errors
connected to false friends between English and Italian. The majority of Hungarian students
encounters English as the first foreign language, and if they choose to study Italian in high
school, they will already possess a certain level of proficiency in English. Both English and
Italian are Indo-European languages, so it is rightful to hypothesize that both types of false
friends (Dominguez and Nerlich, 2002) will have an influence on the lexis of L3 Italian
learners, but because of the frequency of their occurrence, semantic false friends will gain
greater significance.

Chance false friends are those words that are similar or equivalent (graphically
and/or phonetically) in two or more given languages, but without there being any semantic
or etymological reason for this overlap. The Spanish word misa (holy mass) and the
Slovakian one misa (dish) could be regarded as prototypical cases of that kind of false
friends. Equally Spanish burro (ass, donkey) and Italian burro (butter) have the same
phonetic and graphic shape due to a fortuitous diachronic process. […]
Semantic false friends, by contrast, are words that are graphically and/or
phonetically similar in various languages, but their meanings have diverged. Semantic false
friends have the same etymological origin but different meanings in each of these
languages. These different meaning are, however, related to each other by various
figurative links. (Dominguez and Nerlich, 2002: 1836)
 In order to numerically express the extent to which the interference is present, the
possible errors will be elicited from learners via a questionnaire that involves individual
translation (or choosing the correct translation) of words, idioms and sentences from English
to Italian. For this reason, the research methodology is based on questionnaires aimed at
learners between A1 and B2 level of Italian, in the majority of the cases with the English
competence being at least one level above the Italian.

2. Literature review

2.1 The situation of English as a foreign language in Europe

In order to understand the reasons behind L2 English playing such an important role in
L3 acquisition, it is important to consider its situation in Europe and in the world as a lingua
franca, its presence in the media, especially nowadays, in the era of digital communication. A
study on English as a lingua franca facilitates finding the context in which the research is
conducted, considering the concept that future generations will eventually grow up as
bilingual individuals due to the exponential growth of worldwide connections between
people, the immediate availability of authentic input and the demand for English use.
Crystal (2003) explains the process of English becoming a global language and its
influence all over the world. It can be useful because of the historical evidence that proves
how English “occupied” territory and became the main means of communication to this day,
giving birth to World Englishes and setting forth the discussion about English as a lingua
franca (Crystal, 2003).
A book chapter that deeply analyses the historical and sociolinguistic context in which
English became Europe’s lingua franca is connected to Berns et al., entitled English in
Europe. It describes various fields in which English is used, such as workplace, media,
business and education (Berns, 2007). It is interesting to see how in 2007 the work predicted
English’s wide expansion. The continuing expansion demonstrated on the various graphs can
be interpreted as a process that is ongoing and has the same tendencies in a more pronounced
way after more than a decade.

2.2 False friends, their typology and role in interference

 As mentioned in the introduction, false friends have a typology according to which
they can be categorized. Apart from the distinguishment of the two larger categories of
chance- and semantic false friends, the second category “can be divided into two [more]
groups: 1, full false friends, which are those words whose meanings in various languages
diverge widely (are on brink of becoming equivalent to homonyms), such as fastidious and
fastidioso/fastidiosa; and 2, partial false friends, which are those words that have several
senses, some of which coincide in both languages while others do not.” (Dominguez and
Nerlich, 2002)
Dominguez’s article differentiates these categories by bringing examples from
English, Spanish, French and German. It also mentions their connectedness to metaphors and
metonymies, the possible “dangers” of misunderstanding, the implications of false friends in
translation, language teaching, sociolinguistic analysis and pragmatics.

2.3 Corpus of false friends between English and Italian

An early example of usage of the term false friends dates back to 1929, when linguists
started to investigate them and some corpuses and lists were created. Altrocchi references a
French source, Maxime Koessler and Jules Derocquigny’s article entitled “Les faux amis”,
reviewed in L’Italia che scrive [The Italy that writes] a year before, in 1928. The self-critique
in connection to the title depicts how the literal translation of the term became preferable:

The title of this study is, I readily admit, rather awkward. I might have called it more
alluringly: “False Friends”, translating the title of a similar study [Koessler’s] which, to be
sure, was carried out with a far greater scope than I am attempting and was published

long after I had started to collect material (Altrocchi, 1929).

The corpus presented in this paper contains many examples of false friend pairs
(collegio – college, confidenza – confidence, novella – novel, rumore – rumor etc.) that are
frequently used on a daily basis which means that teachers and learners should pay special
attention to them during the language learning process.
Another source of lexical elements that produce false friends in different languages,
including Italian, is Robert J. Hill’s (1982) work entitled “A Dictionary of False Friends”.
Next to every English lemma there are marks indicating the languages in which they have a
deceptive cognate, facilitating selection for research purposes (Hill, 1982).
2.4 Influencing factors, the learner’s proficiency and psychotypology

Bardel and Lindqvist’s study (2007) introduces the concept of language mode
continuum (the theory that in multilingual mode, the speaker activates more than 1 language,
which is an important mechanism to take into consideration while researching cross-linguistic
influence. The activation of L1 and L2 while using the L3 might happen independently from
context and the article reflects on the psycholinguistic factors that play a role in this
activation. Given the fact that English is much closer to Italian than Hungarian, a stronger
interference is to be expected, especially in the case of those semantic false friends where
both of them have a Latin origin (such as educazione – education).

3. Methodology

3.1 Data collection

The current study was conducted by using a survey-type questionnaire that involved
individual translations of words and multiple-choice questions. In order not to have the
participants see any kind of “pattern” in the answers, some “real friends” (lexical elements
that are actually similar in meaning and form) were added, as well as some questions where
there was nothing similar and/or deceptive. Also, it was prohibited for the participants to use
dictionaries, and they were encouraged to use their intuition to formulate their best guesses.
These are important aspects to consider if the goal is to have immediate, non-biased lexical
output from the learners.
The first section asked for specific information about the participants, such as age, for
how many years they had been learning English and Italian, and their level of proficiency in
both of these languages, using the CEFR scale. In cases where the participants did not have a
language exam, they were told to choose a level based on their own evaluation.
The second section contained the most frequently encountered words (such as
education, parent, library, annoy etc.) that student might encounter during the initial period of
their language learning. Because of this familiarity, more learner autonomy seemed as a
viable option for the diagnosis of negatively transferred forms or, on the contrary, a high level
of learner awareness.
 The third section contained words that can be easily confused, with attention to
relative frequency even on levels under C1 (e.g.: accident, actually, argument, college, factory
etc.), organized in multiple-choice questions that contained the correct form (e.g.: accident –
incidente), the false-friend form (accidente* - misfortune) and a non-related, semantically or
phonetically similar word (catastrofe* - catastrophe).

3.2 Participants

The participants were 51 students who learn Italian in Hungarian high schools as their
third language, between the ages of 15-19. The division of their English competence was the
following: 39% C1, 37% B2, 20% B1 and 4% A2. In the case of Italian, 42% claimed to be on
A1 level, 36% A2, 14% B1, 6% B2 and 2% C1. The gap between their proficiency in the two
languages appears to be large because most Hungarian students already start learning English
in elementary school, but Italian is only introduced in high school, so by the time they start to
learn an L3, they are already highly proficient in their L2. As a consequence, the number of
instances in which English interference occurs in this study might be relatively high.

3.3 Data analysis and limitations

In the case of individual translations, each instance counted if the response resembled
the false friend form or the correct translation, disregarding eventual spelling mistakes. The
reason why the numbers in this section do not always add up to the total number of
participants (51) is because in some cases the spaces were left blank or translated to
Hungarian.
However, the second section which is composed of multiple-choice questions
produced more consistent numbers that can be expressed in percentages.

4. Discussion

4.1 Individual translation

In the case of individual translation, the most pronounced error was overlooking the
context shift during the translation of sentences, eliciting the production of semantic false
friends that are relatively close to each other in meaning. The first sentence to translate was:
In school we had to write a composition. In this case, the word composition means essay or
any other written assignment, for which the correct Italian translation would be
componimento, whereas the false friend (composizione) can only be paired with the English
version if the context is not related to school and written texts, but rather to the material
composition of a certain object, or a musical piece. Nevertheless, there were no instances of
correct translation. (cfr. Table A)
Another word with a high number of incorrect translations was education in the
sentence: In Italy, the education is very good. In this context the word in question refers to the
school system, and not the act of educating someone. In Italian, the meaning of educazione
coincides in certain contexts with education, especially if it refers to teaching manners or
bringing up a child, but to refer to a school system, istruzione is the word that native speakers
use. Given the fact that the topic of schools is a part of the Hungarian foreign language
curriculum, this specific word receives more attention from language teachers, as it is a
generally well-known false friend pair. The fact that students are warned more frequently by
teachers about this misconception is demonstrated by the 9 correct translations next to the 19
incorrect ones (cfr. Table A).

A)
Word False friend translation Correct translation
composition composizione 19 componimento 0
education educazione 19 istruzione 9
library libreria 6 biblioteca 28
to annoy annoiare 4 infastidire 12
rumor rumore 4 diceria/pettegolezzo 5
to pretend pretendere 2 fingere 12
parent parente 2 genitore 35
magazine magazzino 1 giornale/rivista 19
cold caldo 1 freddo 21

4.2 Multiple-choice

In the second phase of the study, learners were asked to choose one option from three
based on their best guesses, one being the false friend, one the correct translation, together
with a semantically or phonetically close, but non-related word used as a distractor. It is
important to mention that most of the choices were either the correct or the false friend forms,
the distracting items remaining under 10% (cfr. Table B).
Interestingly, in the case of multiple-choice translations, the highest percentage was
produced by a pair of chance false friends, factory and fattoria (meaning farm). The two
words are phonetically very similar, but their primary meanings are semantically distant, with
only some historical examples of common context, for example factory ship (a vessel used for
catching and processing fish and whales) which translates to nave-fattoria. Considering the
rarity and specificity of the contexts in which the two lexemes might coincide, the possibility
of participants being aware of all the secondary meanings can be excluded. The main
influencing factor in this case is the phonological similarity and the fact that the correct
translation (fabbrica) also forms a pair of chance false friends with the English word fabric.
This “duplication” of deceptiveness that functions in both directions set the ground for a
strong interference, with almost two thirds (63%) of the participants opting for the false friend
translation. Another example of a pair of two words that are phonologically similar but do not
share a semantic field is that of paper and papero (gander = male duck), but the preference
for the misleading translation is significantly lower (33%), as students usually encounter the
word paper (It: carta) in earlier stages of language learning.
The second highest percentage was produced by novel and novella (meaning short
story) and in this case as well there are some additional factors that were bound to increase the
numbers. Firstly, the terms are not only phonetically, but also semantically close to each
other, both being used for describing a literary genre. Additionally, in this specific case the
interference is multiplied again, because the Hungarian term (novella) for short story is
actually a borrowing from Italian, so it can be considered a multilingual, multi-directional
interference, including L1, L2 and L3 as well. To enhance the successful language
acquisition, it could be useful to clarify the terms in all three languages, paying special
attention to the “atypical” English term, while encouraging the positive transfer from
Hungarian to Italian.
Another pair that exceeds the 50% mark, argument and argomento (topic) is
composed by two words that are in a metonymical relationship (Dominguez, 2002), as the
topic on which two people are having a debate is a part of the process of discussing
something. In Italian, discussione can be used to describe a scholarly discussion or a heated
argument based on context, whilst in English two different expressions are used to specify the
manner in which two people contrast their opinion. Both argument and argomento originate
from the Latin argumentum (meaning argument), but in the case of Italian the phenomenon of
specialization can be noticed (Geeraerts, 1997: 78), as the original meaning of the term was
preserved in a narrower, more specific sense.
In the language classroom, explicit warning and usage of the terms in the correct
context can facilitate the differentiation and assist the development of accuracy (Housen,
2012). More examples of the same process are the pairs of actually and attualmente
(currently), college and collegio (boarding school), bag and bagaglio (luggage).

B)
Word False friend Correct translation Non-related third
translation option
factory fattoria 63% fabbrica 33% laboratorio 4%
novel novella 61% romanzo 35% nuovo 4%
argument argomento 52% discussione 46% chiacchere 2%
accident accidente 46% incidente 54% catastrofe 0%
actually attualmente 46% realmente 44% immediatamente
10%
college collegio 44% università 54% scuola 2%
bag bagaglio 38% zaino 58% scarpa 4%
paper papero 33% carta 63% quaderno 4%

5. Conclusion

Based on the findings of this research and the relevant literature, it is clearly visible
that errors caused by both chance- and semantic false friends are phenomena that occur during
the acquisition of the L3. Among the influencing factors, apart from “the learner’s proficiency
and psychotypology” (Bardel, 2007), the phonological and semantical proximity of lexical
elements, the multi-directional aspect, the possible involvement of both the L1 and the L2,
and the frequency of occurrence all play a significant role in the formation of a learner’s L3
interlanguage.
As English is gradually becoming the European and the global lingua franca (Berns,
2007; Crystal, 2003) thanks to the exponential growth of English (social) media consumption,
it will play a growingly important role in the acquisition of any third language, especially the
ones that are relatively close to it on the Indo-European language tree. In the case of Italian,
logically, words of Latin origin produce the most occurrences.
To make use of the available corpora in the foreign language classroom, with the
creation of an extensive list of the most common false friends it would be possible to recall
the learners’ attention to the commonly mistaken forms. It is important to focus on the
examples that are more phonetically distant in order to enhance accuracy, and not on instances
that would otherwise pass through in a conversation and would not cause misunderstandings
in a communicative situation, in a way that fluency is not sacrificed (Housen, 2012).

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Appendix