False Friends, your Enemies or Friends?

Our world is slowly becoming multilingual. The ability to advance along with
the world as it gets more globalized and advanced is increasingly important. Frank
Smith, a well-known psycholinguist, once said, “One language sets you in a corridor
for life. Two languages open every door along the way.” However, in the process,
language learners found difficulties and challenges, encouraging them to find
alternatives or easier ways to learn languages. One of the ways is finding familiarity
or friendly similar sounding words between the target language with their own
language. For instance, Indonesians who learn the Malaysian language. Because in
the practice both have so many similar sounding words, they think it would be easy
for them to learn the Malaysian language. Nevertheless, assuming the same words’
meaning from how they sound or look might be a mistake that learners admit after
plunging themselves deeper into the target language. One of the examples is the word
‘percuma’ which means ‘free’ in Malaysian, while in Indonesian it means ‘useless’.
There are so many examples of this case in cross-language learning and they are what
we call false friends.
French linguists Maxime Koessler and Jules Derocquigny were the first who
invented this case by the longer term “false friends of the translator”. False friends
were described by Sparling (1989) as errors brought on by linguistic changes
(expressions that become obsolete) and by new institutions and ways of life that
students would find it difficult to become familiar with without direct exposure to a
foreign language environment. Some words from two distinct languages may sound
or look similar to one another. The inaccurate assumption made by language learners
is that if two words sound similar or have a similar appearance, then their meanings
will always be the same. Anu Garg in his book ‘Another Word a Day’ gave examples
of the false friends case, “You’d think you can figure out the meanings if you came
across the words embarazada, tasten, and stanza in Spanish, German, and Italian
respectively. But watch out! They actually mean ‘pregnant’, ‘to touch or feel’, and
‘room’ in the respective languages.” (Anu Garg, 2005)
To language learners, finding similarities in the target language might be a
pleasant feeling and even such a relief that words would be easier to get inside their
pockets of vocabulary. However, the existence of false friends could cause several
problems so that language learners need to be more careful in using the same words
across countries. Because not only is this case an embarrassment of hilarity, but there
are other results as well. False friends can seriously affect how information is
interpreted by individuals from different cultural backgrounds, cause considerable
insult and confusion, and even start to change the semantics of a language. Take the
example of a Malaysian who visits Indonesia and uses the word ‘budak’ to call a
‘kid’, surprising an Indonesian who only knows that ‘budak’ means ‘slave’. If
speakers don’t take the pragmatic contrast in various discourses into consideration,
misunderstanding might exist even within a language or dialect.
In spite of everything, just because of the existence of false friends, does not
mean that all of the similar words in cross languages are false friends. Learning the
Spanish language would be easier for English native speakers when they find friendly
or familiar look-like words in their language. For example, the word ‘metro’,
‘hospital’, ‘funeral’, ‘lava’, and ‘visa’ have the same meanings in both languages,
even though the words’ pronunciations in Spanish are slightly different from English.
Suffix addition to the words like –ar, –er, or –ir (adopt—adoptar), changing the
word’s suffix –ous to –oso (curious—curioso), etc. are the examples of the pattern.
These patterns and friendly look-like words are known as cognates or true friends. By
simply remembering the patterns, learners could easily expand their vocabulary and
boost their conversational skills in Spanish. Nevertheless, a false friend is a case that
a bilingual or multilingual must have ever bumped into. Just like how Spanish has so
many true friends to English, the word ‘embarazada’ could be mistaken as
‘embarrassed’ which actually means ‘pregnant’.
 To briefly paraphrase, false friends are confusing words that resemble or
sound exactly like words in learners’ language but entirely have different meanings or
senses. Besides the embarrassment of hilarity, false friends could cause
misunderstanding, serious offense, and affect the language to semantics change. Even
though there are so many cognates, two words that are truly having the same
meanings and helping people in learning languages, people still need to pay attention
to false friends. As a multilingual, just like in social life, one needs to be wiser in
choosing which ones are true friends and which ones are enemies (false friends).
Bibliography

Luu, C. (2018, August 15). Friend or Faux? The Linguistic Trickery of False
Friends. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/friend-or-faux-the-linguistic-
trickery-of-false-friends/

What Are Cognates and How Can They Help You Learn a Language? (2020, June
30). ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-cognate-words-1689859

S., S. (2021, November 6). 75 Most Helpful Spanish Cognates to Know

[Infographic]. TakeLessons Blog. https://takelessons.com/blog/cognates-in-
Spanish-z03

Examples of False Friends in Different Languages. (2019, July 3). ThoughtCo.

https://www.thoughtco.com/false-friends-words-term-1690852

Frunza, O. (2006). Automatic Identification of Cognates, False Friends, and Partial

Cognates. Automatic Identification of Cognates, False Friends, and Partial
Cognates. https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-12045

Nguyenová, L. P. (2012). LEXICAL INTERFERENCE OF ENGLISH AND CZECH

- RISKS OF TRANSLATION RELATED TO THE PHENOMENON OF
“FALSE FRIENDS.” LEXICAL INTERFERENCE OF ENGLISH AND
CZECH - RISKS OF TRANSLATION RELATED TO THE PHENOMENON
OF “FALSE FRIENDS.”

Garg, A. (2005). Another Word A Day: An All-New Romp through Some of the Most
Unusual and Intriguing Words in English (1st ed.). Wiley.
https://grammica.com/plagiarism-checker