Better Vocabulary Learning: Say Goodbye To False Friends

The Fluent Show

It's so annoying when you say a word in your target language and you're 100% SURE it's going to mean one thing...and then it turns out to mean something completely different. Ugh, awkward!

When those words look the same as your native words, you've hit upon false friends. They're a common frustration in language learning, and in this episode I've got some tips that you need to hear if you want to get better at dealing with them.

In today's episode:

• the most interesting false friends in other languages.
• why do these happen, and why I think more people should get excited about false friends.
• what you can do to avoid falling for them again and again.

If you want to learn my tricks to systematically tackle these frustrating false friends, tune in to this podcast episode.

Thank you to Mo for this episode introduction.

The Fluent Show is taking a Christmas break and will be back on 7 January 2019. Stay tuned, and have a WONDERFUL holiday season.
Nadolig Llawen! 🔔
Fröhliche Weihnachen! 🎄
Joyeux Noël! 🎁
С Рождество́м! 👼

Support This Podcast
Like all podcasts, the Fluent Show is supported by your online reviews and word of mouth.

If you liked this episode, please tell someone about it. Click here to tweet about the show, go to your Podcasts app and leave us a review, or simply text a friend about the Fluent Show. Thank you!

Sponsored By:

• Drops: Play with your words in this beautiful language app - free on Android and iOS

Links:

• MacMillan Dictionary Blog: False Friends between German and English
• BBC - Languages - Your Say - False friends
• False friends: their origin and semantics in some selected languages - ScienceDirect
• Automatic Identification of Cognates and False Friends in French and English
• False Friends - Quora
• Does the existence of the linguistic phenomena False friends, False cognates, and Folk etymology point to a human preference for similar sounds to share similar meanings? - Quora
• Cognate - Wikipedia
• Kerstin Cable (@kerstin_fluent) • Instagram photos and videos
• The Fluent Show (@thefluentshow) | Twitter
• The Vocab Cookbook — Buy my book about memorizing vocabulary