False Friends

Abstract

From a synchronic point of view, the linguistic phenomenon of false friends can be defined as the fact that two given words are similar or equivalent graphically or phonetically in two or more given languages but have different meanings. In other words, false friends share their signifiers but they do not share their meanings. Although ‘false friends’ is the most common term applied to this phenomenon, other names, such as faux amis, false equivalents, false cognates, etc., also have been used. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that the concepts of false friends and false cognates are quite different because all false cognates are false friends but not all false friends are false cognates. In other words, the set of false friends includes the set of false cognates but not vice versa. False friends can be classified in two groups: chance false friends and semantic false friends.