False friends are pairs of words in two languages (or letters in two alphabets) that look and/or sound similar, but differ in meaning.
False cognates, by contrast, are similar words in different languages that appear to have a common historical linguistic origin (regardless of meaning) but actually do not. The phrase false cognates is also sometimes used to mean false friends, and vice versa.
Both false friends and false cognates can cause difficulty for students learning a foreign language, particularly one that is related to their native language, because the students are likely to misidentify the words due to language interference. Since false friends are a common problem for language learners, teachers sometimes compile lists of false friends as an aid for their students.
A special kind of false friend can occur when two speakers each speak different varieties of the same language. Speakers of British English and American English sometimes have this problem, and this was once humorously described by George Bernard Shaw as that 'England and America are two countries divided by a common language'. For example, in the UK to table a motion means to place it on the agenda, while in the U.S. it means exactly the opposite—to remove it from consideration. See List of words having different meanings in British and American English.
Comedy sometimes includes puns on false friends, which are considered particularly amusing if one of the two words is obscene; when an obscene meaning is produced in these circumstances, it is called cacemphaton (κακεμφάτον), Greek for "bad-looking".
From the etymological point of view, false friends can be created in several ways:
Cognates. If Language A borrowed a word from Language B, then in one language the word shifted in meaning or had more meanings added, a native speaker of one language will face a false friend when learning the other.
For example, the words preservative (English), Präservativ (German), prezervativ (Romanian), preservativo (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) and prezerwatywa (Polish) are all derived from the French préservatif. However, in all of these languages except English, the predominant meaning of the word has become condom, while the most common French word for "preservative" is now conservateur. Actual has a different meaning in English from what it means in other European languages, where it means current or up-to-date, and has the logically derivative verbto actualize meaning to make current or to update.
Homonyms. In certain cases, false friends evolved separately in the two languages. Words usually change by small shifts in pronunciation accumulated over long periods and sometimes converge by chance on the same pronunciation or look despite having come from different roots.
For example, GermanRat (pronounced with a long a) (= council) is cognate with English read and German Rede (= speech), while English rat for the mammal has its German cognate Ratte.
For example, Roman "P" came to be written like Greek "Rho" (written "Ρ" but pronounced /r/), so the Roman letter equivalent to rho was modified to "R" to keep it distinct.
Pseudo-anglicisms. These are artificially created words constructed from elements borrowed from English, but whose morphemes do not actually exist in English.
For example, in German: Oldtimer refers to an old car (or antique aircraft) rather than an old person, while Handy refers to a mobile telephone.
Japanese is replete with pseudo-anglicisms, known as wasei-eigo ("Japan-made English"). A particularly complicated one is the word naitā which means night-time baseball game. It is derived from the American twi-nighter which is short for twi-night doubleheader, baseball slang meaning two games played by the same teams in a single day, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening, usually starting at twilight and continuing into the night. The Japanese naitā is strictly Japanese baseball slang, and is unknown to American baseball fans. In English, nitre (of very similar pronunciation) is a name for potassium nitrate.
Idioms. Some phrases commonly used in one culture and language, may lose context when translated to another language, conveying a totally different meaning.
For example I'll call you back means that I will call you at a later time, in reply to your call, or in a later attempt to call. However, translating literally to Spanish would end up in Te llamaré para atrás, which actually means: I'll call you backwards or I'll talk you backwards. The correct translation would be Te llamaré más tarde.
The Parker Pen Company may have experienced a case of such confusion when they were trying to translate their slogan "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you" for the Latinomarket. As they mistakenly thought embarazar meant to embarrass, the Spanish slogan was proudly displayed across Latin communities as: "It won't leak in your pocket and impregnate you" (to embarrass in Spanish is "avergonzar"). (Serva 2003)
Words like "hot dog" can come out lost in translation, and especially since words carry different connotations in different areas; Richard Lederer, an author and professor of English, once went to Germany and asked a vendor for a heißen Hund (a literal translation of "hot dog"). The vendor broke out laughing, for in German, heißer Hund suggests a dog in heat (Germans use the English term "hot dog" as a loan phrase).
This phenomenon may seem most-famously illustrated by the rumored attempt to translate the Biblical quote, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," from English into a non-English language (in one version, Russian), and then back into English, producing the result, "The wine is strong, but the meat is rancid." However, what this actually demonstrates is merely the danger of not choosing the right idiomatic words or definitional choices out of several, when applicable, in translating. Another example of this is the time an American President visited another country intending to speak in their language about "our hopes for the future," only to come out with "our lusts for the future."[citation needed]
