Surrounded by false friends

Marian Zamorski
English Language Centre, the University of Wroclaw (Poland)
Pilgrims at the University of Kent

In one of the Polish 'quality' magazines I read a few months ago that our planet is inhabited by around six billion people. Not a terribly exciting piece of news one might say but, still, even with my scanty knowledge of geography I would have got terribly excited if not confused had I not known where the problem was: if you say billion in Polish you mean 6,000,000,000,000 (sic!). The translator obviously got it all wrong, linguistically and mathematically (as well as geographically).

Many believe quite rightly that false friends are the realm of lexis only; but even more are convinced that all there is to it is this annoying, for all students and some teachers, and yet fascinating (for whom?) simple case of duality: this or that word, though it looks identical in both languages, has completely different meanings in each of them. The easiest approach in dealing with the problem would be, and this is what most teachers tend to resort to, to compile a list of these. At lower levels such oversimplification offers easy solutions as the learner's experience and linguistic instinct are limited if not 'naïve', but a more complex approach might throw the learner back and slow down the delicate process of taming the innate fear to navigate dangerous waters of a non-native language.

Very truly, it is words we mostly think of when the expression false friends is thrown at us, but is it really so?
If we pursue this line at higher levels or with a more inquisitive student, we will fall victim to a devastating prejudice in the art of teaching/learning a foreign tongue and will erroneously train our brains to develop and perform wrong habits. Imagine that a student encountering a false friend is warned of the semantic duality: he/she will consult a dictionary, compare the different meanings in both languages, will absorb and consolidate this knowledge and then will trot off into the big world. The smug sense of achievement will catch the fellow off guard when a more subtle problem occurs.

We seem to be dealing with not a mere duality: at the level of lexis, we can classify false friends into at least six categories; this classification being narrowed down to two languages only, English and Polish.

1. An English word is identical with a Polish word, but has a completely different meaning:

- baton means crunchy bar in Polish,
- data means date in Polish,
- past means shoe/floor polish or tooth paste in Polish,
- agenda means branch (office) in Polish,
- car means tsar in Polish.

2. An English word is identical with a Polish word but in the latter language there is an extra meaning:

- parasol has the same meaning in Polish ( portable screen providing shade) but also means umbrella in Polish,
- golf has the same meaning in Polish ( a game played on a course) but also means polo neck in Polish.

3. A Polish word is similar to an English word, but has a completely different meaning:

- karnacja is similar to English carnation but means complexion in Polish,
- lunatyk is similar to English lunatic but means sleepwalker in Polish,
- obskurny is similar to English obscure but means shabby or sleazy in Polish,
- pensja is similar to English pension but means salary in Polish,
- precedens is similar to English precedence but means precedent in Polish.

4. A Polish word is similar to an English word but in Polish there is an extra meaning:

- scena is similar to English scene and has the same meaning but also means stage in Polish,
- proces is similar to English process and has the same meaning but also means lawsuit/trial in Polish,
- emisja is similar to English emission and has the same meaning but also means broadcast in Polish.

5. A Polish word is similar to an English word and the meanings are identical but in English there is an extra meaning:

- prezent is similar to English present and has the same meaning (= gift) but is not an equivalent to the English other meaning, namely not absen t,
- rasa is similar to English race and has the same meaning (pertaining to a group of people or breed) but is not an equivalent to the English other meaning, pertaining to competition,
- cywilny is similar to English civil and has the same meaning (= not connected with the armed forces) but is not an equivalent to the English other meaning, namely polite.

6. A word, either identical or similar, occurs in both languages and, although their meanings are by no means identical, they will overlap or blend semantically: this is probably the most 'treacherous' pitfall taking unawares even a seasoned language expert:

- marmolada means any fruit preserve but the least that made from citrus fruit,
- kombatant is a military person who, however, is no longer involved actively in combat (= veteran),
- nowela is a piece of prose ( short story) in Polish, not the same as novel in English,
- pantonima has nothing to do with pantomime, it means mime (=art form),
- tabaka is not all tobacco: it is only the powdered tobacco called snuff in English,
- but (pronounced /bu:t/) is any shoe, not necessarily English boot. Similarly Spanish desgracia on rare occasions means 'disgrace', more often it means 'misfortune'. N.B.
- ewentualnosc is even more mind-bending: in Polish, like in English, it has one and the same meaning ( eventuality), but has no negative association with something unwelcome or unpleasant.

Confusing as these categories are, we still find some sort of foothold as long as only two languages are involved. More often than not a false Polish/English friend is a word borrowed from a third language, usually Latin, Greek or French. It seems that students are more likely to be caught off guard in such situations.

- actually means 'currently' in Polish, but will incessantly be misused by a less advanced or experienced student; a lexical item of the same derivation existing in Polish ( aktualnie), it would be only too tempting not to take a mental short cut,
- eventually ties in so nicely with the Polish ewentualnie (meaning 'possibly') that it would take an idiot to reach for a dictionary and look the word up. The conscientious one will, however, find out that in Polish it does not mean 'finally' or 'in the end'.
If you want to take a roller-coaster ride, plunge into confusibles. Not just any, but the ones which have the same etymologies in both English and Polish:

- excess and access are sometimes used interchangeably by Polish students who seem to get confused by the similarity in spelling (eksces and akces in Polish),
- accession and access are even more difficult on account of more sophisticated semantic differentiation in L1 ( akcesja and akces),
- compliment (from French) andcomplement (from Latin) both have the same, and only one, formal equivalent in Polish ( komplemen t) but retaining their respective meanings.

Semantic comparisons will render no easy verdicts as sometimes the subtle contrasts may surface only in collocations:

- civil will not collocate in Polish with 'rights', engineering', 'war' or 'servant' but 'civil defence' ( obrona cywilna) or 'civil ceremony' ( slub cywilny) are the same in both languages,
- 'civilian population' is a lexical chunk functioning in both languages but for 'civilian casualties' there is no equivalent chunk in Polish.

Occasionally, an unsuspecting Polish student may stumble over a word which will resemble two words in English and in this case even an erudite in L1 will remain blissfully unaware of a trap:

- precedent is an equivalent of Polish precedens which, in turn, deceptively resembles the English precedence, but between the last two there is no connection whatsoever; this being similar to the complement/compliment paradox.

Another problem are the so called false cognates: these are words that, due to sheer coincidence, happen to have the same form, but seldom the same pronunciation, in both languages; etymologically and semantically they are unrelated, in the same way as homonyms:

- knot is whick in English,
- sad is orchar d in English,
- tort is layer-cak e in English,
- but is shoe in English (see 6.).

Even fairly advanced students in Poland find themselves further at a loss when they encounter British and American counterparts:

- taxi = cab , boot =trunk or are pretty straightforward cases: one is British, the other American,
- crisps = chips and chips = (French) fries , >waistcoat = vest and vest = undershirt , polo (neck) = turtle (neck) and turtle (neck) = mock turtle (neck) are more complicated as each pair of British-American equivalents overlaps with another pair, which probably even some native-English speakers find a bit unsettling.

The unfortunate fact that a foreign student studying English has not been told that he or she is, in fact, not studying English but e.g. American English gives rise to yet another misconception which may badly affect both his or her English as well as his or her mother tongue!

- The American word chips for ( potato) crisps has replaced a Polish equivalent word so successfully that the Polish word (prazynki) is now becoming obsolete. On top of that, the American word sounds and looks so 'anglicised' that the Polish student immersed in and exposed to the locally prevailing British variety will use chips for crisps putting himself at risk of a communication breakdown when walking into an off-license in Islington. A more enlightened student, aware of these subtleties, will use both words accurately, but sometimes, depending on the amount of prior drill, interchangeably with all the likelihood that crossing the US border will panic and immediately forget which is which.

Talking of the 'anglicised' words, we must bear in mind the so called pseudo-anglicisms, i.e. words that everybody believes to have originated in one of the English-speaking countries but which, in fact, have been coined either by big multinational corporations or some 'trend' setters:

- SMS ('short message system') is so common in Polish or Czech that a student will send an SMS over a mobile phone (or cellphone) instead of sending someone a text message or even texting them',
- handy is believed by most Polish students to be a word for a mobile telephone (the word is used in German and spelt with capital H); German seems to be infested with pseudo-anglicisms: 'fesch' meaning 'smart' or 'chic', 'twen' for somebody in their twenties or 'jetten' for travelling by jet planes; in Switzerland very fit people will run on long narrow skis, pursuing what they call 'le skating', etc.

There seems to be a point of contact between the above and what is sometimes referred to as 'International English' where the word in a way does not belong to the native user any more. It is branded with a new connotation or meaning by the international user and it is the English native speaker who has to learn his or her language anew: the word 'mobbing' is spreading throughout Europe and is no longer related to the English original meaning.

Another curiosity are words borrowed from a third language which, although mean more or less the same in both English and Polish, have different morphology:

- stadion is Polish for stadium where Greek and Latin etymologies are confusingly intertwined, making the student very often jump to rash conclusions,
- kryterium (for criterion) is a very interesting example of grammatical rather than lexical confusion: the student coming across English plural 'criteria' will, in another context, shift it back to singular 'criterium' in the same way the Latinised plural functions in Polish ( kryterium-kryteria).

Similar morphological traps lead to fallacious word formations:

to examinate seems to be a logical derivation from 'examination' (cf. 'extrapolate' and 'extrpolation')

Polish students seem to be obsessed with this 'examination' business. (Another reason to re-think the whole idea of testing or examining, both being a highly stressful experience when emotion affects badly intellectual performance). So under the unnerving circumstances of an examination the Polish student will invariably be /?egz?ma?nd/. Other pronunciation problems will include the difficulties in discriminating between e.g. /i:/ and /?/ as in sheet or piece and shit or piss. The Polish vocalic system is half the size the English one, so understandably the student needs a lot of practice to differentiate such pairs of vocalic segments, first aurally and then orally. There are at least five pairs of English vowels which are close to each other from their articulatory, acoustic and auditory point of view and they have to be demonstrated to the student in one way or another to prevent him from social embarrassment.

Finally, an example of a grammatical trap. In both languages there are pairs of tenses referring to the past and distinguishing between 'complete' and 'incomplete' aspects. A background past state is usually described by means of the Simple Past Tense as in ' The trees stood majestically on both sides of the road. ' In Polish, however, the same statement merits 'incomplete' aspect so it will invariably be rendered, even by very advanced students, as ' The trees were standing majestically on both sides of the road'.

Without grammar little can be conveyed, without lexis nothing can be conveyed: the above examples seem to illustrate the proportions between various types of language traps. Most pertain to the misuse and abuse of words rather, but this reflects the general feeling among the students: grammatical errors are less discernible and frustrating whereas lexical gaffes seem to be very painful, especially that an average student will measure his or her progress still by the amount of lexis absorbed rather than through the complexity of grammatical structures that have been mastered. Are we then back to square one, where cognitive, communicative or humanistic learner-centred user-friendly approaches are wacky useless gizmos designed in the eccentric ELT laboratories? I am sure they are not, but let the fastidious student sometimes do a bit of painstaking, meticulous and pedantic work with a target mono-lingual dictionary. Slowing down? Absolutely not: a sense of achievement will doubly pay off at the end of the day.

Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.