The background and challenges of false cognates between Spanish and Portuguese

Language Contact, winter semester 2020

Manuel Fernando Rios Sanchez

Student code: 1094440

Prof. Dr. Theodoros Marins

M.A. Multilingualism, 1​st​ semester

23/03/2021

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 Table of contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Definition of cognates 4

​2.1 Classification of true and false cognates: 4

​2.1.1 Types of false cognates 5

3. History: Latin heritage 6

​3.1 Etymological classification 7

4. Cross-linguistic interference: 8

​4.1 The myths of ease 9

5. Literature review 10

​5.1 Contrastive Analysis of false cognates 10

​5.2 The most common false friends 10

​5.3 How to teach and learn about false cognates 12

​5.4 Set theory for false cognates 14

6. Conclusions and limitations 15

7. References 17

Table of figures:

Figure 1 Classification of cognates according to (Chacon, 2006) 5

Figure 2. List of the most common false friends in Spanish-Portuguese 11
Figure 3. Example of an image used in the study 13
Figure 4. Subsets of disjoint sets of false friends 14

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 1. Introduction
Learning a foreign language is an enormous trip through a different culture and a
different way of thinking. The action of interacting with another culture leads to language
contact and thus, language interference. The lexical and syntactical factors are the most
affected fields in this interaction and one clear example of this, is the concept of false
cognates, better known as false friends. Cognates are words with similar spelling or
pronunciation in both languages. There are true cognates, where both words have the same
meaning between languages, and there are false cognates, where the cognates differ in
meaning in both languages. For instance, Spanish and Portuguese are closely related
languages, 85% words of the lexicon are cognates (Ulsh, 1971)This leads to a very high
cross-linguistic influence but also leads to many interferences.

Filho (2009) states that related languages drive to the learners to live in a zone of
deceptive ease given by the perceptions of the students. According to Durao (2004) there is
a scientific hypothesis of the ease of learning in similar languages, she proposed “the
development of lexicon in a second language begins with the projection of the mental
lexicon in the native language…in some cases the transfer between the native language and
the foreign language may be successful. However, in many other cases may not be”. This
phenomenon leads to the common use of ​–portunhol- ​in which speakers mix both lexicons
to perform a common language but full of semantic and pragmatic mistakes.

The lack of knowledge of false friends between related languages may conduct to
different conflicts in communication such as: misunderstandings, code switching and even
culture shock due to the semantic mistakes and pragmatic interference. The teaching and
learning process in one hand, of Spanish for Portuguese speakers and on the other hand
Portuguese for Spanish speakers has been really affected by these cognates, the
phenomenon has been analyzed by many different dictionaries, books, workbooks, videos
and websites which have listed these cognates. Alves (2002) says that words with the same
origin, in this case Latin, but with a different semantic evolution, interfere in the
communication process, not only in the spoken but also in the written language.

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 This paper will define and conduct an overview of the literature related to cognates,
specifically false cognates between Spanish and Portuguese, due to the approximation of
these two and the common mistakes made by the learners of these languages. The
conclusion will state some limitations, suggestions, challenges and future research in this
area in order to better understand and to propose ideas to reduce this interference with
related languages.

2. Definition of cognates
Cognates are words in a language which have a similar form or meaning to a word in
another language because both languages are related (Richards & Schmidt, 2002) Cognates
share phonological and/or orthographic form, and typically are related semantically
although they are not always translation equivalents (Hall, 2002) Cognates are an important
part in the learning and teaching of a foreign language due to the similarities that a student
can find across languages. First, the process of learning cognates might differ from learning
other words because learners can draw directly on their knowledge in one language to
facilitate word learning in the other language. (Mendez, Peña, & Bedore, 2010)

2.1 Classification of true and false cognates:

The researcher Chacon (2006) conducted a study called The CCVF (​Clasificacion
de Cognados Verdaderos y Falsos) ​he classified the cognates into different variables, first
if they are true or false cognates, second if they are graphically of phonetically represented
and third, in the case of false cognates if they have a total or partial meaning in both
languages, this guides the classification in six different categories depending on the
taxonomy of the cognates: 1. True cognates: Phonetic 2. True cognates: graphic 3. Partial
false friends: phonetic 4. Total false friends: phonetic 5. Partial false friends: graphic 4.
Total false friends: graphic (figure 1)

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 Figure 1 Classification of cognates according to (Chacon, 2006)

2.1.1 Types of false cognates

Many studies have classified the false cognates in different categories, some of
them doing generalizations and other being very specific and accurate, they have been also
named as false friends, hetero-semantics, lexical calques, faux amis or deceptive cognates.
This paper will describe two of the most common categorizations of this pragma-semantic
issue.

The classification made by Neta & Floresta (2000) divides the false friends in 3
categories: hetero-tonic, hetero-gender and hetero-semantic:

Category Description Example

hetero-tonic Same meaning and similar En: phobia
spelling but the tonic Pt: fo​BI​a
syllable is different Sp: ​FO​bia

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hetero-gender Same meaning and similar En: the nose:
spelling but the gender Pt: o nariz (masculine)
(masc-fem) is different Sp: la nariz (feminine)
hetero-semantic Similar spelling but Pt: borracha (En: eraser)
different meaning Sp: borracha (En: drunk
woman)

According to Humblé (2006) there are four kinds of false cognates, taking examples
from Portuguese and Spanish: the first one is the traditional, where two words are
pronounced or written in the same way in both languages but they differ in meaning: PT:
embaraçada (embarrassed) SP: embarazada (pregnant). The second type is the words that
are almost the same in meaning and structure but they are used in different contexts and
you need to understand the pragmatics of the word: PT: ​eu acordo cedo (I wake up early) ​o
livro despertou um grande interesse (​ the book awoke a big interest) SP: ​yo me levanto
temprano (I woke up early) SP: ​el libro despertó un gran interés (the book awoke a big
interest). The third type is the words that have the same meaning and spelling but there are
some exceptions of use depending on the –correct mode- for native speakers. PT: ​esse
professor é uma lástima (that teacher is a really bad teacher) SP: ​lástima del professor (We
feel bad about the teacher) And finally the fourth kind is the words that have same meaning
and spelling but the syntax or lexicon may differ: PT: ​falei para ele (I told him) ​eu digo a
verdade​ (I say the truth) SP: yo ​le dijé​ (I told him) ​yo digo la verdad​ (I say the truth)

3. History: Latin heritage

Analyzing the history of these two languages is very important at the time of
understanding how certain words with similar or same roots were transformed in shape and
meaning throughout time and space. The formation of false friends in Spanish and
Portuguese began when they were the same language: Vulgar Latin.

The background of Portuguese and Spanish, as with all Romance languages begins
with the Roman Empire, which spoke Latin and spread the language across the lands that

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they conquered and governed. In that time, there were no Spain or Portugal countries; there
was only Hispania and Latin reign supreme on the Iberian Peninsula for the next 600 years.
However, Latin was changing by itself and gradually became a colloquial and everyday
language called Vulgar Latin. This common language developed different variations
depending on the region and influences of other cultures. After the fall of the Roman
Empire and the rise of the Arabic, many words were introduced in the languages. Finally, in
1143 the County of Portugal declared its independence as a separate Kingdom from Leon
and expanded to fill out most of the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Portuguese was
also by this time a markedly different dialect from the other Vulgar Latin daughter dialects,
and Portugal’s separation from Leon ensured that this would continue to be so. (Martens,
2015)

The definition of false cognates was born in the book ​Les Faux Amis ou les trahisons
du vocabulaire anglais by Koessler, Maxime, & Derocquingny (1928) where they listed
words that do not share the same meaning with their etymological pairs in English and
French. From there, many definitions and classifications in different languages were
created in order to clarify the concept and real meaning of these words.

3.1 Etymological classification

Ringbom (2011) classified cognates depending on the lexical transfer in two types:
transfer of form and transfer of meaning. The first one is related to mainly complete
language switches which may be partially or totally deceptive. The second one defines
other instances of lexical transfer like calques and semantic extension on the basis of
patterns in other languages. Nonetheless, this classification is very general and it is not
taking into account the background of the word and defining how the cognate was born and
transformed into the actual meaning in both languages.

In a Brazilian congress of Hispanic people conducted in Sao Paulo in 2002, Alves

(2002) presented an etymological theory of false cognates divided in four groups: 1. Two
words formed by two different Latin words but with similar roots: PT: ​vaso ​(toilet) SP:
vaso (glass) 2. One word with the same origin and meaning in Latin, but one language adds
a new meaning: PT: ​esquisito (strange) SP: ​exquisito (delicious) 3. One word with multiple
meanings in Latin, but one language keeps only one of those meanings PT: sugestão

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(suggestion/recommendation) SP: ​sugestión (induction of an idea) ​sugerencia
(suggestion/recommendation) 4. Two similar or identical words but with an totally different
origin and meaning PT: ​rato​ (mouse) SP: ​rato​ (short period of time)

In the cases where the L1 and the L2 are historically related and share some
similarities, language learners should be systematically trained to take advantage of cognate
words and thereby enhance their reading skills and their global understanding of the text
(Moss, 1992) For this reason, Spanish and Portuguese which share a Latin heritage should
have special attention in research, teaching and learning due to the different kinds of false
cognates in order to clarify the etymological differences and establish correct meanings in
diverse contexts.

4. Cross-linguistic interference:
At the time of learning a foreign language, it is natural to transfer meanings from
the native language to the new one, linking the previous knowledge with the target
language. A study exploring the mutual intelligibility of Spanish and Portuguese reported
that listening comprehension in Portuguese among Spanish speakers with no previous
knowledge of Portuguese was more than 50%. About reading comprehension is even
higher, those who know Spanish can almost immediately understand advanced readings of
Portuguese, it could be up to 94% of an academic text. (Jensen, 1989)

The use of cognates in related languages such as Spanish and Portuguese has very
high risks in terms of semantics and pragmatics. Most of the students face diverse
embarrassing situations with false friends and they learn through experience and contact
with the target language. For instance, the word ​–buseta- i​ s the word for –bus- in countries
like Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, however, in Portuguese the word ​–buceta- is a rude
and offensive word to refer to the vagina. These vast changes of meaning totally alter the
purpose of the communication and the Grice (1989) maxims of quality, quantity, relevance​1

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Quantity: be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
Quality: be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
Relation: be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
Manner: be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, avoid obscurity and ambiguity

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and manner may be easily violated, resulting in an enormous confusion for the speaker and
the listener.

One of the main risks with false friends is not knowing the real meaning of some
cognates in specific tasks, for example in reading, it is potentially more dangerous that not
knowing the meaning of unfamiliar words, in the former case students usually try to infer
the meanings of those familiar words without checking them (Arnold, 1992). When a
language learner misunderstands a false friend, it is very improbable that s/he realizes the
actual meaning, unless negative evidence is provided by means of explicit information
(Lightbown & Spada, 1993). This is very common among language learners, they usually
use false friends with the wrong meaning for a long time until they have to face an
uncomfortable experience and another person must correct their mistakes and clarify the
real meaning of the word.

Another interference is proposed by Frantzen (1998) pointing out that many

students tend to overgeneralize meanings as a result of a large number of cognate words
without knowing that certain words can have a deceptive meaning in specific
​ eans –to take- in Portuguese, but in Spanish it
circumstances, for instance the verb ​tomar m
means –to take- or –to drink- depending on the context. For the students, it is very
important to understand the different contexts of the words to set the real meaning of a
cognate in different situations. According to Galiñanez (2006) “the false friends as a
linguistic phenomenon, is one of the most dangerous linguistic interferences…because a
wrong meaning of a word may alter the communication with the reader or listener and the
producer may ignore that mistake”

4.1 The myths of ease

Alves (2002) defines three myths in this contact between Spanish and Portuguese:
1. The myth of the ease: it is said that learning these languages is very simple if your native
language is one of them, even there is a common thought that one is the dialect of the other.
2. The myth of bilingualism: students believe you can magically turn bilingual due to the
fact of knowing the structure and lexicon of one of the two languages because they can
understand many words when they listen or read in the foreign language. 3. The myth of
sonority: students think that they just need to modify some key elements of pronunciation

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and intonation to produce Spanish or Portuguese words, for example its common to use the
diminutive suffixes ​–inho(a)​ in Portuguese and ​–ito(a)​ in Spanish.

All of previous myths have been scientifically broken considering that Spanish and
Portuguese are different languages with a complex syntax, phonology and semantic
variation, besides both languages are not completely intelligible, the input skills: listening
and reading may be easy at the beginning with a basic vocabulary and paused rhythm,
nonetheless, the output skills: speaking and writing need a lot of structure, strategies and
experience to be performed. The variations ins rhythm, the vowel instability of Portuguese
and the variety of consonant sounds present in Portuguese but not in Spanish cause a
negative transfer between languages (Simoes, 2008) Learning a foreign language being a
native speaker of a related language requires a lot of attention to perceive the limits
between both languages.

5. Literature review

5.1 Contrastive Analysis of false cognates

At the time of studying false cognates, we are comparing two lexical systems in two
different languages, in most cases those languages share a common background and
lexicon. For those reasons, in order to classify these cognates, Lado (1971) considered three
aspects in the words: the shape, the meaning and the distribution. Based on that, Garcia
(2008) analyzed cohesive elements such as conjunctions and linking words in Spanish and
Portuguese to determine false and true cognates between languages. She verified that the
use of false cognates is very common in texts and they can completely alter the global
meaning of the text, creating problems of comprehension and cohesion.

This study showed the importance that teachers should create special materials and
activities where the students can perceive the different ways of use of these cognates and
the distribution of meanings in both languages. These materials can be taken from authentic
texts and dialogues of the target language giving examples of proper cohesion and
coherence in the target language. It is also important to analyze the common errors made by

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the learners in their spoken and written productions to better understand how the
interferences are given in the language.

Nonetheless, the study made by Lado (1971) only analyzed conjunctions and
connectors in written language. Most of the interferences with false friends come from
verbs and adjectives. Next, it will be presented a study which determined these common
false cognates that students and teachers should really pay attention to avoid
misunderstandings at the time of spoken and written communication.

5.2 The most common false friends

In 2012, there was a study conducted in Brazil by Melgarejo (2012) with the
objective of finding the most common false friends used by native speakers. The study
compared 43 false friends found in 4 dictionaries of false friends (Spanish-portuguese)
Amigos Traiçoeiros (1996), ¡OJO! con los falsos amigos (2002), Dicionário ilustrado
Falsas Semelhanças (2003), Minidicionário Antiportunhol (2004) and the concordances of
these cognates in the CREA: corpus of Spanish language created by the ​–Real Academia
Española- t​ he analysis showed that most of these texts include irrelevant cognates that are
not common in the spoken language and daily use, also the given examples are not proper
and updated, some of them out of context.

Besides, the meanings of the false friends were not enough due to the different
variations in use, leading to misinterpretations and mistakes. In the case of the corpus, they
really found the common words used by native speakers and the way and context where
they are produced showing a clear path of the real use of false friends in different contexts.
They created a list of the most common false friends used in both languages which can be
found in their research project. (Figure 2)

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 Figure 2. List of the most common false friends in Spanish-Portuguese

In 2018, in Uruguay, a group of researchers: Sacastro, Jbonanata, & Aialar (2018)

also provided an approach to classify false friends and cognates which showed to have both
high accuracy and coverage using the database of WordNet, corpus from Wikipedia and the
Mikolov (2013) technique, studying it for the particular case of Spanish and Portuguese and
providing state-of-the-art results. They used up-to-date word embedding techniques, which
have shown to excel in other tasks, and which can be enriched with other information such
as the words frequencies to enhance the classifier. They found that a word vector in one
language is closer to the cognate word vector in another language when it is transformed
using this technique, but far when they are false friends. Demonstrating that the corpora and
a list of common words in most languages can be easily found on internet in order to know
and understand the real meanings and contexts of cognates.

With these studies, a list of the most common false cognates was produced in
alphabetical order and there was enough lexicon to study taken from the corpora of both
languages. Now, after having an extended list of words, the next step was to find the way in
how to instruct these cognates to language learners because knowing a list of words is not
enough for learning and even more in this case when the pragmatic and semantic value is
very high.

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 5.3 How to teach and learn about false cognates
In 2015, there was a study from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá-Colombia
conducted by Agudelo & Pinto (2015) where they developed an educational material to
raise awareness about the existence and correct use of false cognates between Spanish and
Portuguese, finding that most of the false friends are not taught in the language class and
the students must go to different experiences and mistakes to learn them. For this reason,
they designed a chain of activities with cartoons, images and dialogues (Figure 3) to allow
the students to learn these cognates in a real context. The research revealed that false
friends are learnt in a specific context and by experiencing the language due to the
pragmatic level that they have, the students keep thinking the meaning of the deceptive
cognate in their minds, but they acquire a new meaning for the L2.

Figure 3. Example of an image used in the study

Martinez (2018) from the University of Minho in Portugal took a group of

Portuguese students who were learning Spanish, they had many formal lessons of Spanish
and they took many lessons about false friends. At the end, they had to complete a series of
worksheets to assess if they really knew the meaning of certain false friends. The study
revealed that it is necessary for formal instruction of these deceptive cognates, the students
should be able to interact with these words without interference. It was proven that just

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giving a list of words to memorize is not enough, the teaching of these should be through
clear examples of daily life and exposing students to real-life situations and being exposed
to these communicational problems caused but the false cognates. In addition, there was
evidence that intermediate students already had ​fossilized cognates, words that they have
assumed for a long time to be true but they have been wrong without perceiving, these
words are the most difficult to change because they are already stored in the long-term
memory of the students.

These methodological proposals are just examples of the many different ways in
which teachers have taught false cognates in the language class and there are diverse
materials online, specific books and dictionaries of false cognates. These studies were
interesting because they are taking into account the pragmatic level of these words in real
context and daily-life situations with visual images that help the students to better
understand these words. One weakness of these materials is the fact that false friends can
have multiple meanings depending on the context, for this reason the following study
reveals a theory to better comprehend this phenomenon.

5.4 Set theory for false cognates

In the XVII EURALEX International Congress, the researcher Amadeu (2016)
shared a study of cognates using the Set Theory to create special dictionaries. In this case, if
the set A contains all the meanings that one lexical item has in one language, while the set
B contains all the same meanings of the other language, they are paired as equal or similar.
Nonetheless, in many cases not all the lexical units of set A share identical meanings to set
B, in this case they are disjoint sets, therefore subsets must be created in order to find
contact points (Graphic 4). The purpose of the study was to resolve discrepancies and
provide a good understanding of this theoretical and practical issue through the creation of
specific dictionaries on these semantic subsets. This analysis was useful not only for
students but also for teachers, since teachers will be enabled to explore the relationship
between two or more similar lexical items, which may turn beneficial for students’ learning
strategies.

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 Figure 4. Subsets of disjoint sets of false friends

This study analyzed the set theory of cognates between English and Italian, it would
be a great opportunity to create this strategy between Spanish and Portuguese to really
identify which are the common characteristics of some false cognates and to find the
differences among them. This will be very useful for teachers and learners to avoid
misunderstanding and communication interferences related to cognates.

6. Conclusions and limitations

The notion of false friends has been analyzed in different perspectives and they have
been classified in diverse groups. This phenomenon has caught the attention of many
linguists and lexicographers producing a vast quantity of papers, dictionaries, books and
research. In languages with a common heritage such as Portuguese and Spanish with the
same origin from the Vulgar Latin, this interference is a high risk for learners and may
totally affect the communication and comprehension. Many students experience

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uncomfortable situations with these words that they take for granted and they assume they
have the same meaning as in their native language.

This paper described the different ways in which cognates can be classified: first,
depending on the taxonomy of the cognates: 1. True, false, phonetic, graphic, total and
partial (Chacon, 2006).Second, depending on the category: hetero-tonic, hetero-gender and
hetero-semantic Neta & Floresta (2000). Third, depending on the meaning:1. the
traditional, where two words are pronounced or written in the same way in both languages
but they differ in meaning, 2. the words that are almost the same in meaning and structure
but they are used in different, 3. the words that have the same meaning and spelling but
there are some exceptions of use depending on the –correct mode- for native speakers and
4. the words that have the same meaning and spelling but the syntax or lexicon may differ.
(Humblé, 2006). Fourth, depending on the etymological classification: 1. Two words
formed by two different Latin words but with similar roots, 2. One word with the same
origin and meaning in Latin, but one language adds a new meaning, 3. One word with
multiple meanings in Latin, but one language keeps only one of those meanings, 4. Two
similar or identical words but with a totally different origin and meaning.

In the previous literature review, there was a common thought: false friends need
special instruction through situational and communicative approaches where the learners
could be exposed to these cognates in a real and daily use. For this purpose, it was set the
creation of special dictionaries (Amadeu, 2016), analysis of the most common phrasal verbs
based on corpora of both languages (Sacastro, Jbonanata, Aialar, 2018), formal teaching of
false cognates (Martinez, 2018) and the creation of educational materials (Agudelo and
Pinto, 2015). These studies revealed in a consistent way how to identify, present and learn
about the different meanings and context of false cognates.

For future research, it is important to consider many other methodological techniques

and materials in how to instruct about false friends with students of Portuguese and Spanish
language based on situational and experiential approach where the students can interact
with the different socio-cultural situations in which they will use these deceptive cognates.
In addition, it is vital to continue the research of the most common false friends between
these two languages with the use of new technologies using corpus linguistic programs to

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establish an up-to-date list of these words. Finally, it could be paramount to create
awareness of the challenges and risks at the time of learning related languages with a
common background, special lessons should be conducted to analyze the similarities and
differences in these languages.

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 7. References

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