False Friends/falsche Freunde
With the False Cognate Glossary
The good news: German and English are closely related and have many words in common. And the bad news? German and English are closely related and have many words in common.
Any English-speaker learning German should be aware of this fact. But sometimes things are not what they seem to be. Among the many words the two languages have in common lurk the so-called "false friends." Linguistic false friends can be just as dangerous as the human variety. These treacherous words pretend to be something they aren't. They can lead to embarrassment, or if you're lucky, just laughter.
False friends, more accurately known as "false cognates," are particularly prevalent in the two Germanic languages English and German. Because the two languages are such close relatives, they have a lot of words that look and sound alike or very similar. The innocent variety includes word pairs such as: begin/beginnen, house/Haus, garden/Garten, brown/braun, father/Vater, and summer/Sommer. There are many of these genuine cognates, and any language learner should use them to advantage. The genuine cognates can be just as helpful for a German learning English as for an American learning German. But the false ones can also be a hidden danger going both ways. (There are many German books warning of such dangers in learning English.) Whether they are called "confusing words," "false friends," "words to watch out for," or anything else, false cognates are something a language-learner must always be aware of. It's too easy to fall into the trap.
Continued below chart.
More
falsche Freunde in our
False Friends Glossary
So, just what are we talking about, actually (
aktuell)? Eventually (
eventuell), we have to be brave (
brav) and face the problem (
Problem).
In the two sentences above, only one of the
German words in parentheses next to the English word is a true equivalent of that word. Do you know which one? Of the four, only
das Problem could be used in the same sense as the English. Although
aktuell looks almost like a twin of "actual" or "actually," the German word actually means "current, topical, up-to-date." German
eventuell is almost the opposite of "eventually," meaning "possibly" or "perhaps." English "brave" is expressed in German by
tapfer or
mutig, while
brav means "good, well-behaved"--as in "Du bist ein braver Junge, Hans." ("You're a good boy, Hans.")
Take the
"False Friends" Quiz!
Some false friends are only a problem in the wrong context.
Rezept resembles the English word "recipe" and can mean just that. But
ein Rezept is also a "prescription" for the pharmacist (
Apotheker). On the other hand, if you think "receipt" when you see
Rezept, the German word you really want is
Quittung or
Beleg.
The German word
Star can mean "starling" (bird), "cataract" (eye,
grauer Star) or the word it resembles, "movie star." One thing it does not mean is a "star" in the night sky. That would be
Stern, another false cognate. For a list of more than 75 false cognates with their true meanings, see our
Glossary of "False Friends" in German.
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