False friends
Anyone who’s ever been to a market in France with their best beginner’s French and wondered why the burly, unshaven man with a hangover, of whom they’ve just asked a perfectly reasonable question, is now laughing his face off and calling his buddies over to share, has probably just had his or her first unpleasant lesson in what are called false friends (les faux amis).
All you did was smile and say, S’il vous plaît, monsieur, est-ce qu’il y a des préservatifs dans vos saucissons?
Your intentions were irreproachable but, alas, you’ve just inquired whether the man’s salamis contain condoms.
False friends are French and English words which are similar or identical in spelling but which, in fact, have very different meanings.
And I’m amazed how many translations I see fallen into the trap.
Say you had this (granted, awful) text to translate:
Bless this house
You have watched your community disappear. You’ve been living too long in isolation, miserable, prevented from enjoying life. Always proceeding with caution, nervous about rape, theft, trespassing and everyday hazards; continual distractions from terrible neighbours. You feel a pressing need for change.
Make the sensible choice and renew your zest for life, starting today.
Luxury retirement condos with dedicated delivery entrance, underground car park and complete facilities for special occasions.
Talk to our experienced salesmen today. Versatile and fastidious, they’re here to assist and support you. No tentative agreements, we actually care about your needs and no issues are too trivial.
Only a few vacancies left.
Eschewing your dictionary and common sense, would lead to this:
Wound this house
You have watched your community disappear. You’ve been living too long in insulation, impoverished and warned about enjoying life. Always proceeding with down-payment, highly-strung about cheese graters, theft, dying and everyday coincidences; continual entertainment from marvellous neighbours. You feel a dry cleaning need for change.
Make the sensitive choice and renew your lemon peel for life, starting today.
Lusty removal condos with autograph rescue entrance, underground bus park and full easiness for unusual second-hand objects.
Talk to our experimental salesmen today. Fickle and tedious, they’re here to attend and put up with you. No attempted certification; we currently care and no exits are too crass.
Only a few holidays left.
· · • · ·
Share your humiliating language experiences.
- I’ll go first.
When I was living in Leningrad, I used to go to this little kiosk to get theatre tickets for the week.
I was looking at the list of plays and saw the title “Dark Day.” So I thought, ooo, that’s a new one, and asked the woman in the booth what it was about.
“What?”
“Who’s it by?”
She just stared at me, sort of growling and, just as I opened my mouth to say, “So?” I realized it meant the day that the theatre was closed.
And there was the time I ordered 50 kilos of salami instead of 500 grams and just stood there watching the butcher slice and slice and slice, trying desperately to remember how to say half a kilo.
— Gail Jan 10, 10:26am #- After taking high school Spanish, my friends and I were in a border town
here in the states. My friend asked the waitress for a drink “mucho coolo”.
While he meant a very cold drink, he had actually said “a drink with a big
butt”. Tee Hee! The waitress was none too pleased.
Of course in Spanish class there was a cute little chica who sat next to me.
And being the 17 year old lothario that I was, I wanted to tell her she was
an incredible fox. Fox not being in my Spanish/English dictionary, I said
“Tu eres un lobo increible”. Her reply was “I am an incredible WOLF?”.
Dave
— Dave Jan 10, 11:43am #- In Japanese, the characters for “plate” and “blood” look quite similar, at least to the neophyte.
Being one of those, I used to say “plate” whenever I wanted to say “blood”, for quite a while. Since many of the stories I told involved the word “blood”, this happened quite often.
Once I had a bycicle accident. I told the story of my glorious survival to a friend, in a bar (in Japan), meaning to say ”... and all this blood came out of my leg” while actually saying ”... and all these plates came out of my leg”. The listener nodded and smiled politely, mumbling something like “oh, is that so?”.
Humiliating? Of course. It is definitely humiliating to realise that you’ve been considered an utterly surreal and rather original character for the wrong reasons.
— katatonik Jan 10, 3:37pm #- Whilst on holiday in a delighful central american nation – a long overdue holiday that involved meeting my wife after having travelled several hours by bus. With time to kill, I decided to shower the road dust off my dirty self . Finding no soap in my pack or room, and thinking, “sopa” was the Spanish version of the word, I asked the perplexed innkeeper for sopa. Repeatedly. While miming taking a shower. I went back to my room after getting a tentative nod from the man behind the desk. As I waited, I decided that there was no soap to be had and began to shower. About 5 minutes later, the proprieter showed up at the door, and was confronted by myself, dripping on the floor, towel wrapped around. He thrust a bowl of vegetable soup into my hands and disappeared. To this day, there is a man in San Jose who thinks some gringos like to cover themselves in vegetable soup while they shower…
— J.D. Jan 10, 6:36pm #- One summer I did a French immersion course in Quebec. It was really hot that year and I couldn’t understand why when I’d say, oh, je suis chaude! people would start laughing. Then I found out that I should have been saying j’ai chaud, and that I’d been going around saying, Oh, I’m horny, I’m horny.
— Carrie Jan 11, 5:08am #- I went to Italy for a month with only two shaky semesters of Italian under my belt. My friend and I just arrived in Milan and were starving so we went to this small bar to get a some sandwiches. I was unsure about tipping so I tried to ask the waitress if tipping was normal. All I could think of was the word for point, like the tip of something, la punta.
So I asked using la punta and my friend who’s fluent in Spanish thought I said putta which apparently is the world for prostitute. He starts punching me in the arm and hauling me out of the place, thinking the waitress is gonna flip shit.
As soon as he drags me out of the bar I remember the right word, run back in and ask her correctly only to follow it up by saying Mi dispiace, scusa, ho molto stupido or Sorry, excuse me, I have very stupid.
She nodded in complete accordance.
— Claire Jan 11, 8:29pm #- Related to the original, our beloved fish of babel also have some friends in low places:
“This house You bless observed your community disappear.
You’ve living too a long time in insulation, unhappy, prevented from appreciating the life. Always proceeding with prudence, highly-strung person on the subject the rape, the flight, enfreignant and of the daily risks; continual distractions of the terrible neighbors. You feel a need pressing for change.
Make the significant choice and replace your peel during the life, starting today.
Condos of luxury of retirement with the devoted entry of the delivery, the underground car park and the complete equipment for special occasions.
Maintenance with our salesmen experienced today. Flexible and tiresome, they’re here to help you and support. Aucuns experimental agreements, we really worry about your needs and no exit is too unimportant.
Only a few vacant posts left.”
He’s right about those exits, though.
— Malthe Jan 11, 9:38pm #- Having mastered (cough) French at an early age, I took a crash course in German in my last year in high school. One day, the teacher of our little group thought it would be a fun idea to take the Snow White (Schneewittchen) story and translate it “back” to German.
We took turns to translate a paragraph or two of the brief English text our Lehrerin provided.
The dangers of trying to learn a language quickly were highlighted when it fell to me to translate the queen’s “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…” poem.
“Spiegelei, Spiegelei an der Wand,” I began, “Wer ist die Schnste in dem Land?”
I came close. Spiegel = mirror. Unfortunately Spiegelei = fried egg.
— Keith Bell Jan 12, 1:14am #- I can sympathize with katatonic. Japanese is a great language for being misunderstood. I spent some time on the main island as an exchange student, and I lived in a constant state of embarrassment.
I distinctly remember talking with my host parents and describing a school play I had seen. I was rather impressed, so I was very emphatic about the whole thing. Everything was fine until I tried to describe how cute the kids were.
The word for cute (kawaii) is easily mixed up with the word for terrible and scary (kawai), especially when spoken with a thick California accent. To make matters worse, I only knew a few adjectives so I overused the ones I knew.
I’ll leave the rest of the conversation to your imagination.
— David Varvel Jan 14, 6:49am #- Not exactly a translation story, but surreal none the less. When I liven in Japan, I knew next to no Japanese. (My company was supposed to pay for lessons, but…). Our local quick mart propreitor was a friendly guy, and I’d drop by nearly every day to pick up some fluffy bread or Georgia coffee. His grasp of English was as good as my grasp of Japanese, yet we used to have these long conversations. It wasn’t too long before I realized that in fact, we were having completely different conversations, simultaneously. I think I was learning about his son who was visiting America, but maybe not. He might not even have a son. Who knows! I wonder what he thinks I was saying to him, and what kind of person he thinks I was! Still, nice guy.
— Dan Sroka Jan 14, 6:39pm #- I remember when I was first starting to speak French, a necessity here in Quebec. I was picking it all up by ear, so my grasp of grammatical subtleties was unsurprisingly weak.
A couple and their baby were eating at the restaurant I worked at, and the baby’s pacifier fell on to the customer-inaccessible side of the counter. I rushed over and picked it up for them and then, wanting to be helpful, offered to wash it for them. Unfortunately, what I actually said was “Veux-tu me laver?” (“Would you like to wash me?”).
It was only a minute or two later that I realised what I’d said. I hid in the back of the restaurant until the couple – the man laughing, the woman frowning – had left.
— Bill Jan 15, 1:45pm #- While still green in my ecclesiastical service in Santiago de Chile, I made my share of false friends.
A particularly memorable one occurred one day after lunch. We were eating a particularly tasty cake (the first thing I recognized as truly edible, incidentally). Wishing to compliment the cook, and having checked the word for tasty (rico) with my companion, I told the little mother who gave us pensin that her queque was rico.
She looked at me strangely and said something about servants of God not talking that way. I turned to my companion, who, through tears of laughter, explained that “est rico su queque,” meant that she had a nice posterior.
Chagrin!
— aaron Jan 15, 8:33pm #- “Embarazada” is Spanish, not for “embarrassed,” but for “pregnant.” There was a girl in my Spanish class who became very avergonzada while actually telling a false friend story.
— Brenda Jan 21, 1:01am #- I took German in high school, as did a friend of mine. She had the opportunity to be an exchange student to Dortmund, Germany, after only 2 years of German classes.
On one of her first nights with her host family, when she headed off to bed, she wished them a “Gute Nackt.” They pointed out to her that she probably meant “Gute Nacht” (good night). What she had wished them was “Good naked.”
At a later point, during a meal she was offered more and declined, politely explaining, “Ich bin voll”. Unfortunately, that does not mean “I am full”—but rather, “I am drunk.”
— Guy Jan 21, 4:13am #- For anyone who can speak French, a slew of false friends used in advertising campaigns.
— Jan 21, 1:48pm #- How the h… was i to know, what former kings habit of marrying two wifes is called. How should i know, that the second wife is called a ‘morganatic wife’ and not ‘second hand wife’?
Oh well. I’m Danish. Not English. :o)
— /many Jan 29, 4:39pm #commenting closed for this article