5 ms·

False Friends of the Slavist

59 points by striking 7y ago

jobigoud 7y ago
I can't comment on Slavic false friends but I've found that for French-English, Spanish-English and French-Spanish, if you really force yourself into thinking the words in the correct accent, the "friendliness" disappears. As the two words are pronounced differently they are thought of as their own concepts, instead of related to each other. Say "Journey" vs "Journée", if pronounced correctly they don't sound anything similar at all. We should remember words as they are spoken with a strong accent. Maybe for false friends it would be even better to exaggerate the accent.
- rerx 7y ago
  But the English word "journey" has precisely the same roots as today's French "journée": A journey may have been a day's worth of traveling. A "journeyman" was paid day by day.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    Maybe that's a good mnemotechnic device at first, but it adds an indirection on top of a translation, which I think would be a bad habit to get from the start. I would argue that it's better to forget about the connexion the two words might have had in the past and embrace them as they are now. YMMV depending on your goals with learning the language.
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      But the point is, journey and journée are in fact etymological cognates, despite one having shifted semantically. The fact that they're pronounced differently is just a coincidence, and not related to the fact that they have different meanings.
      - jobigoud 7y ago
        I don't think it's a coincidence per se, the languages diverged a long time ago and drifted away both in pronunciation and meaning. My point is that false friends are blurring the border between the two languages in your brain, they are confusing because they make you think of something in the wrong language. A solution to reinforce the separation of languages in your brain is to only think about them in the context of their own language, as soon as possible.
        rerx 7y ago
        But my knowledge of Italian really helps my understanding of French and Spanish, although all are foreign languages to me. False friends are an exception; but apart from knowing some language generally is an aid to learning another language if it is related.
- kolmogorov 7y ago
  That’s only true for some of these or some equivalence class . Take gift and gift for German - English or bekommen and become and many more .
- lgessler 7y ago
  By that method, every true friend would be predicted to be a false friend. Sounds aren't what's important here--divergent meaning shifts in cognates is.
dsego 7y ago
Fwiw, the Cr-Bo-Sb cluster is complete bullshit. Those meanings are not unique for each country, I know all the meanings for all the words listed. Any differences depend more on the regional usage or context.
- mistrial9 7y ago
  hmm I think the idea of wiki-anything is that you can contribute to improve the content, when you have specific knowledge.
rdtsc 7y ago
I am surprised by the number of "false friends" between Russian and Polish https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/False_Friends_of_the_Slavist/Russian-Polish https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/False_Friends_of_the_Slavist/R... I'd listen to my Polish friend speaking and I'd think, I know what he is saying because I hear familiar words, but then I get confused as they mean different things.
mirimir 7y ago
For me, it's Romanian that sounds strange. Sometimes it sounds like Russian or Czech to me. And other times like Spanish. Depending on the speaker, and my frame of mind. I do speak Russian, and a little Czech and Spanish, but not Romanian. It's my vague understanding that Romanian is closer to Latin than other Romance languages. But the accent can sound Slavic, even though the words are almost Latin. Also, Russian does have French and English loan words. And for ones that overlap with Romanian, they sound a lot alike.
- zwirbl 7y ago
  I've observed Romanians talking with Italians in their respective language and understanding each other mostly fine
  - mirimir 7y ago
    That makes sense.
dron57 7y ago
I read over the lists of Russian-Polish and Russian-Ukrainian and most of the so called false friends are only false friends because one of the languages may have more than one meaning for the word. The other meaning is still similar enough to be recognizable.
nathias 7y ago
False friends are a window into language differentiation, you can see how the same word was used in a more general way or for more different senses and when languages separated due to geography or politics each retained only a specific part of the sense/contexts and began forming new...
vertigolimbo 7y ago
My favourite is russian ‘запомни’ and polish ‘zapomnij’ which sound very similar but mean completely the opposite - ‘remember’ and ‘forget’. One might think how through history one word got the opposite meaning.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Also interesting (to me) are words that are clearly etymologically connected yet mean something totally unrelated. E.g. French pas meaning "not" and Spanish paso meaning "step".

59 points by striking 7y ago

I can't comment on Slavic false friends but I've found that for French-English, Spanish-English and French-Spanish, if you really force yourself into thinking the words in the correct accent, the "friendliness" disappears. As the two words are pronounced differently they are thought of as their own concepts, instead of related to each other. Say "Journey" vs "Journée", if pronounced correctly they don't sound anything similar at all. We should remember words as they are spoken with a strong accent. Maybe for false friends it would be even better to exaggerate the accent.

rerx 7y ago
But the English word "journey" has precisely the same roots as today's French "journée": A journey may have been a day's worth of traveling. A "journeyman" was paid day by day.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  Maybe that's a good mnemotechnic device at first, but it adds an indirection on top of a translation, which I think would be a bad habit to get from the start. I would argue that it's better to forget about the connexion the two words might have had in the past and embrace them as they are now. YMMV depending on your goals with learning the language.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    But the point is, journey and journée are in fact etymological cognates, despite one having shifted semantically. The fact that they're pronounced differently is just a coincidence, and not related to the fact that they have different meanings.
    - jobigoud 7y ago
      I don't think it's a coincidence per se, the languages diverged a long time ago and drifted away both in pronunciation and meaning. My point is that false friends are blurring the border between the two languages in your brain, they are confusing because they make you think of something in the wrong language. A solution to reinforce the separation of languages in your brain is to only think about them in the context of their own language, as soon as possible.
      - rerx 7y ago
        But my knowledge of Italian really helps my understanding of French and Spanish, although all are foreign languages to me. False friends are an exception; but apart from knowing some language generally is an aid to learning another language if it is related.
kolmogorov 7y ago
That’s only true for some of these or some equivalence class . Take gift and gift for German - English or bekommen and become and many more .
lgessler 7y ago
By that method, every true friend would be predicted to be a false friend. Sounds aren't what's important here--divergent meaning shifts in cognates is.

dsego 7y ago

Fwiw, the Cr-Bo-Sb cluster is complete bullshit. Those meanings are not unique for each country, I know all the meanings for all the words listed. Any differences depend more on the regional usage or context.

mistrial9 7y ago
hmm I think the idea of wiki-anything is that you can contribute to improve the content, when you have specific knowledge.

rdtsc 7y ago

I am surprised by the number of "false friends" between Russian and Polish https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/False_Friends_of_the_Slavist/Russian-Polish https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/False_Friends_of_the_Slavist/R... I'd listen to my Polish friend speaking and I'd think, I know what he is saying because I hear familiar words, but then I get confused as they mean different things.

mirimir 7y ago

For me, it's Romanian that sounds strange. Sometimes it sounds like Russian or Czech to me. And other times like Spanish. Depending on the speaker, and my frame of mind. I do speak Russian, and a little Czech and Spanish, but not Romanian. It's my vague understanding that Romanian is closer to Latin than other Romance languages. But the accent can sound Slavic, even though the words are almost Latin. Also, Russian does have French and English loan words. And for ones that overlap with Romanian, they sound a lot alike.

zwirbl 7y ago
I've observed Romanians talking with Italians in their respective language and understanding each other mostly fine
- mirimir 7y ago
  That makes sense.

dron57 7y ago

I read over the lists of Russian-Polish and Russian-Ukrainian and most of the so called false friends are only false friends because one of the languages may have more than one meaning for the word. The other meaning is still similar enough to be recognizable.

nathias 7y ago

False friends are a window into language differentiation, you can see how the same word was used in a more general way or for more different senses and when languages separated due to geography or politics each retained only a specific part of the sense/contexts and began forming new...

vertigolimbo 7y ago

My favourite is russian ‘запомни’ and polish ‘zapomnij’ which sound very similar but mean completely the opposite - ‘remember’ and ‘forget’. One might think how through history one word got the opposite meaning.

umanwizard 7y ago
Also interesting (to me) are words that are clearly etymologically connected yet mean something totally unrelated. E.g. French pas meaning "not" and Spanish paso meaning "step".