False Friends

[krait]

(In response to a thread about favourite 'false friends' in language)

I'm never going to be over the weird pile of humourous potential that is poisson | poison | das Gift | a gift.



(Edit: now with the entry date fixed!)

Comments

[marinarusalka]

My personal favorite is embarazada|embarrassed .

[isis]

Ahaha that is really great - I knew the two halves but never thought about putting them together like that!

[ride_4ever]

When I was in Canada for the RCW 139 due South con, a fangirl from Europe who meant to say "where can I buy poutine" said "where can I buy putain". (Good thing she said that amidst fen and not out on the street to some passerby.)

[angledge]

In American English, pants are an outer layer of clothing for your legs, like jeans or slacks.
In British English, pants are an inner layer; specifically, it refers to underpants.
In American English, khaki is a brown color.
In British Englihs, khaki means shitty.

So apparently, GAP's "khaki pants" advertisement campaign was a real hoot in the UK.

[krait]

Hee, that's what I love about false friends! It's a whole chain of Unfortunate Resemblances, bridging languages in potentially-fatal ways. :D It's like the perfect storm of dangerous confusion.


...If you gave somebody a fugu you could cover all of them at once! :P

[krait]

Mwahaha, OOPS. What a slip!

[southerncontinentskies]

I'm now thinking of a multilingual "Kuzco's poison" meme that quickly devolves into a "who's on first" routine, but unfortunately I'm not clever enough to write it myself.

[pebblerocker]

Khaki is the colour of army uniforms, and in British English is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable. "Cack" means shit. So it sounds like Americans are saying "cacky pants", which is definitely a hoot.

[angledge]

Thank you for the clarification - someone told me about the GAP khaki pants ad campaign when I was in Edinburgh for grad school in 2003. We were probably drinking when the topic came up, so I didn't get all the details straight!