False Friends in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning: Arabic as an Example

Abstract

This research aims at discussing the false friends in teaching and learning Arabic. This is shown by means of a theoretical approach which explicates the false friends concept origin, and types . It also presents the western implication of the false friends, their origin in the languages, as well as their influence upon teaching and learning a language. The research then presents an applied approach of those false friends in five languages, compared to the Arabic language, namely: Urdu, Indonesian, Turkish, Malay, and Hosa based on the analytical descriptive approach. The false friends are mostly common among languages that have relationship –or from the same language family- and are less common in the diverged languages. Furthermore, false friends emerged as a result of borrowing among languages, by hairing an effect on teaching Arabic to non-native speakers of Arabic in five languages.