As other stated it is when two words in different languages are similar phonetically/graphically.
They are called false friends because they seem familiar and you expect to mean the same as with other words that are pronounced similarly in two languages and mean the same. False friends not just mean different things but they sometimes can change the phrase in a bad way.
Note: The following examples are with Spanish from Spain, they might be different in other Spanish speaking countries.
Alice and Bob discussed about having children
Alicia y Bob discutieron sobre tener niños
In English Alice and Bob had a conversation, in Spanish they had an argument.
Bob is a sensible guy
Bob es un tipo sensible
Bob is a person who acts with prudence and thinks carefully in English, in Spanish he is a guy where feelings affect him easily.
I had an English teacher who told the same anecdote about false friends and her sister. She was in UK and the batteries for the remote died, so she went to a convenience store and asked if they had them.
The thing is that in Spanish we only use battery (batería) for the ones that are not meant to be replaced regularly, like the car battery, the laptop battery, etc. The replaceable ones (even the rechargeable that take the same shape), are called pilas. So in the anecdote, the sister told the woman at the store very confidently “Do you have piles?” (haemorrhoids, for the ones who doesn’t know).
I don’t know how real the anecdote was, but it fulfilled its purpose to make us aware of these situations ñ.
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
In a nutshell, words that look the same / similar but with different meanings in their respective languages, making it pretty confusing.
treadful@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Like homonyms or something different?
Lemmert@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
False friends usually aren’t homonyms since the word comes from different languages.
To give an example: an English speaker might look at “rare auto” (Dutch) and might translate it to “rare car”. But “rare” means “weird” in Dutch. So rare is a false friend in this case
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
The Dutch word for “who” - wie - is the same as as the German word for “how”.
Nastiest false friend I know because it’s a very common use word in both.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s cool about “rare” in Dutch. It’s the same in Spanish. “Qué raro” means “How weird.” So that’s a false friend for English, but an accurate one between Spanish and Dutch!
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
There are many false friends between French and English. Off the top of my head:
EN: eventually (FR: un jour) FR: éventuellement (EN: possibly)
“Enregistrer” in French both means to record something and to save a file, but you can’t use the English word “register” for both.
“Défense” in French both means defense and prohibited, but you can’t use the English “defense” for both.