1.6 False friends — the 60 words that will trip you — Epoché
What you will be able to do Recognise the sixty commonest German words that look like English words and are not, and give the real meaning of each. Use the eight worst of them correctly, including the noun that means poison, the verb that means to receive, and the adjective that means current. Apply a five-step procedure to a word you have grown suspicious of, instead of guessing and hoping. Say why the two directions are not symmetrical: a wrong guess while reading costs you a sentence, and a wrong guess while speaking can cost you a great deal more. Prerequisites : 1.5 — you need the pseudo-anglicisms from that lesson, because step three of the procedure in this lesson asks whether a suspicious word is an English loan, an inherited word or a borrowing from Latin. This lesson takes back a small part of what the volume has given you, and it is the most important lesson in the volume for exactly that reason. Everything so far has told you to trust the resemblance. Lesson 1.1 told you that the everyday vocabulary is shared; 1.2 and 1.3 gave you rules for recovering a shared word from behind a shifted consonant; 1.4 gave you a whole academic vocabulary for the price of ten endings. The confidence that builds is justified, and it will carry you a long way. But it is confidence, and confidence is what makes a certain class of mistake possible. A learner who knows no German at all cannot mistake the German word for poison for the English word gift , because such a learner does not read German sentences. You do, now. So this is not a beginner's problem that you will grow out of. It is a problem that appears only once the resemblance has started working, and it gets worse before it gets better. Why they exist, which tells you where to look There are three quite different reasons a German word can look English and mean something else, and knowing which one you are dealing with tells you how much to worry. The first is ordinary semantic drift in an inherited pair. Two related languages keep the same word and the meaning wanders in one of them, or in both. English deer once meant any animal, and German kept that older sense while English narrowed it. English bath and German's word for a bath are the same word, but the German one also means a spa town, which is why so many German place names begin with it. This kind of false friend is usually mild: the two meanings are related, and you can often see the connection once it is pointed out. The second is separate borrowing from the same third language, usually Latin through French, with the two borrowers taking different senses. This kind is nastier, because the words are long and look technical and carry an air of precision. The German word that looks like English actual means current — both languages took a Latin word about acting or happening, and English went towards real while German went towards now . The German word that looks like eventual means possible , by the same kind of split. Neither is a mistake by either language; they are two reasonable developments from one root. The third is coincidence, and it is the cruellest because there is nothing to reason about. The German word for a skirt and the English word rock have nothing to do with each other; the German word for advice and the English word rat have nothing to do with each other. These simply have to be learned, and they are the ones most likely to produce a sentence that is grammatical, fluent and absurd. The rule While reading, trust the resemblance only as long as the sentence makes good sense. While speaking, do not trust it at all for any word on this list. The asymmetry matters and it is worth stating plainly. When you read, a false friend produces a sentence that is strange, and strangeness is a signal you can act on: you notice, you check, you correct. The cost is a few seconds. When you speak, a false friend produces a sentence that is perfectly ordinary German and means something you did not intend, and nothing signals anything to anybody. You will not find out. That is why the words in the word list at the end of this lesson are to be learned actively, in the German sense, and why every other word on the sixty is at least to be recognised. Here is the procedure. It takes about fifteen seconds and it is worth it whenever a word matters. Test the sentence. Read the whole sentence with the English meaning in place. If the result is odd, unnecessary, comic, or merely a little too convenient, stop there. A German sentence that seems to be about a rat when the subject is a decision is not about a rat. Check the part of speech and the gender. A false friend very often differs in one of them, and both are visible on the page. The German word that looks like English most is a noun with a masculine article; if you are expecting a quantifier, the article has already told you that you are wrong. Ask which layer it is in. Short, old and concrete means inherited, so expect mild drift from a related sense. Long, with one of the endings from lesson 1.4, means borrowed, so expect the two languages to have taken different senses from the same Latin root. Written in English spelling with a German capital means a loan from lesson 1.5, so expect either the English meaning or a German invention. Look it up in German. A German-to-German dictionary gives you a definition instead of an equivalent, and a definition cannot mislead you in the way a one-word gloss can. Failing that, ask for two or three example sentences and read the meaning off them. When speaking, go round it. If a word is on this list and you are not sure, use a longer phrase you are sure of. Nobody has ever been thought less of for a circumlocution, and the alternative, in the case of the word for poison, is to offer somebody one at a birthday party. The eight that matter most These eight come up constantly, and every one of them will change the meaning of a sentence rather than merely colour it. Learn them from the corpus sentences