No one likes to be misled by a sales pitch. If you’ve ever bought what you thought was a bargain online only to realise that the reason it was so cheap is because it’s a miniature version of what you wanted, or arrived at your luxury holiday villa, taken one look at the mouldy shower and understood why there was no photo of the bathroom in the brochure, you’ll relate to the frustration of expecting one thing, and getting quite another.
Most of us know the apocryphal story of the English tourist who unwittingly asks a French butcher if the sausages are made out of condoms, a delicious mistake ripe for the making due to the linguistic phenomenon of “faux amis” or “false friends”: words in a foreign language which look similar enough to English to trick you into thinking you’re asking about the preservatives in your meat products when what you really said is something quite different!
Our name, Language for Fun, is of course the absolute opposite of a false friend as it does exactly what it says on the tin. We don’t mislead or mis-sell: we really do think fun is what you get when you sign up to one of our classes! In fact, we love to tackle linguistic oddities like false friends in a light-hearted way, so here’s a little taster of the “fun” in Language for Fun…
If you have a smattering of French, Spanish or Italian, or you think you know your preservatives from your “préservatifs”, have a go at our “faux amis” quiz below and let us know your answers in the comments. You never know, you might learn something that will spare you getting mis-sold a sausage (or worse) next time you go away.
- The Spanish word “carpeta” means a) folder b) carpet c) carp
- The Italian word “morbido” means a) soft b) morbid c) dead
- The Spanish word “constipado” means a) constipated b) congested nose c) stuck
- The French word “raisin” means a) grape b) raisin c) reason
- The Italian word “ratto” means a) erratic b) rat c) grated
- The Spanish word “embarazada” means a) pregnant b) embarrassed c) embraced
- The Spanish word “fatal” means a) fatal b) foetal c) terrible
- The French word “privé” means a) private b) privet c) deprived