Beware of ‘false friends’ when speaking French
Never assume French-sounding words from English mean exactly the same in France
Beware of embracing English words directly into your French vocabulary - sometimes they are not your friends
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As a teacher, I spend a lot of my time pointing out to my students the insidious nature of ‘false friends’ (faux amis). These are words that are identical, or almost so, in English and French but which do not have the same meaning.
French (with respect to English) is full of these little devils. You cannot know a word is a false friend until you use it in conversation and do not get the reaction you expected.
You might be met with a blank look or your interlocutor might misunderstand you all together. Only then can you get down to the business of untangling definitions.
When a French person says he works for a societé for instance, he doesn't mean the RSPCA, but a private company.
An agenda in French is not the order of discussion for a meeting but a diary, and a chauffeur is not the uniformed driver of a posh car but anyone who drives a bus or coach.
The person in charge of this newspaper (the editor) is not l’editeur as you might expect but la directrice (directeur for a man) de la publication. Sensible in French means not reasonable, imbued with common sense and with a stiff upper lip but extremely sensitive.
And so it goes on. You have to learn about these words one by one.
The only advice I can give is to keep your ears open; laugh off any misunderstanding; look up the offending word on the excellent wordreference.com website; and remember not to make the same mistake next time.
The golden rule is that you must translate a false friend by another word and that means stretching yourself mentally.
Read more: Nine reasons to learn French
Common French mistakes
Some false friends are more important to know about than others because they lead directly to misconceptions.
Passer un examen in French does not mean it is time to toss mortar boards in the air, only that the person concerned is taking an exam. He may or may not pass the exam in the English sense which would be réussir un examen.
Similarly, if a police officer stops you to tell you he is going to verbalise you, it does not mean he is going to find the right words to express his thoughts aloud. He is going to issue a fine.
Oh, and I wouldn't say that a pot of jam is full of preservatives to a French person. Un preservatif is a condom.
Others are merely amusing. I always smile when I hear someone is going to a séance, which has nothing to do with spiritualism. It’s just a session, meeting or appointment.
And to have a mission at work sounds as if 007 is being dispatched undercover when in reality it is a humdrum function or duty.
Metaphorical difficulties
Occasionally, it is the metaphorical use of a word that throws me. La table de Joel, in a food critic’s review, refers not to a piece of furniture but a restaurant.
If you are told on the radio you are going to hear a tube it won’t be the resonance of a cylinder of metal: tube is the word for track or piece of music.
That’s before we get to the informal use of words. A friend recently told me that he was worried that the opening of a new fast food restaurant would lead to the road being strewn with cartons.
I assumed he was talking about rubbish flung onto the side of the road. Carton normally means cardboard but it has two figurative meanings.
It can be a hit (success) or a car crash or pile-up. How was I supposed to guess that my friend was talking not about fruit juice containers but actually bad drivers?
