Hi, Does anybody know of a list of Polish-English false friends and true friends.
For those not up on the terminology, a false friend is a word that sounds the same in the 2 languages but has a different meaning. For example, as a Pole for a preservative and see what you get! :) More of a 'preventative' is what you will receive :)
I'm looking for the list of false friends to prevent such mistakes but, the list of true friends will be incredibly useful as a way to boost my vocab very quickly indeed. For example, mailować, surfować, powokować are such true friends that are easy to remember.
In the meantime, I have a race with a friend to completely memorise all the verbs in "301 Polish verbs" but thakfully not all the conjucations and perfectives.
Nerwowy - nervous, not the same. Nervous tends to mean afraid whereas nerwowy means agitated more.
Angina - angina. Angina pectoralis refers to a chest condition, in Polish it's an ailment connected with the throat. I know this as my friend told me she had angina, I was alarmed. She was surprised at my reaction.
I'll write more in a bit. I just need to think of them, I have encountered many
yeah, i've come across this one where a friend said somebody was making her nervous, she really meant annoyed. Of course, similar problem i had a year ago explaining to somebody in Polish I was too nerwowy to speak... meaning nervous.. oops!
Maybe I should set up an online false-friend database.
I think it is funny the way many of these are not false friends in German. For example szef 'chef' is boss in german, and katar is very much like Kater which means male cat but more commonly 'hung over' (ie headache, upset stomach, sore body).
and Ewentualnie which seems like eventually in english is very much like eventuell in german which means "maybe, but most likely not at all" but in english "yes, but it could take a while".
Brat - means “brother” in Polish, looks like (English “brat”) which means “bachor” in Polish.
Klej – means “glue” in Polish, sounds like (English “clay”) which is “glina” in Polish.
Dres – means “tracksuit” in Polish, sounds like (English “dress”) which is “ubierać” or “sukienka” in Polish.
But – means “shoe” in Polish, sounds like (English “boot”) which is “bagażnik”, “kozaczek”, “but wojskowy”, or “zapuszczać” It also looks like (English “but”) which means “ale” or “lecz” in Polish.
Parapet - means “windowsill” in Polish, looks like (English “paratet”) which means “przedpiersie” in Polish.
You will see "warzone" on a bottle of Warka Strong. Don't worry, this doesn't mean the yanks have found oil there, it is a conjugation of the verb "to brew".
English to Polish numbering systems are different after a million.
That's a continental thing. Nearly everywhere on the continent an English billion is a milliard; a billion is usually the next step after a milliard, like this: million, milliard, billion, billiard. A continental billion is therefore 1000 English billion +.
I've seen more examples of things that are actually widespread in continental Europe, but are actually different in English. Poland is just being a continental state with all its influences linguistically.
>^..^<
M-G (what's after a billiard, I don't know, I guess Trillion and Trilliard and after that...)
I am afraid but the story of "false-friends" and "tru-friends" might not encompass those words which are already "loans" from a tertiary language. That is to say Polish "hazard" ~ "gambling" and English "hazard", are both of an Arabic origin (Arabic "az-zahr" ~ "to die") which have adopted new semantic concepts. The same thing also occurs for English "lunatic" and Polish "lunatyk" (sleepwalker) where they both are originally borrowed from Latin "lunaticus" (moon-struick).
I am not sure but Polish "gnat" (bone) and English "gnat" could be considered as sorts of false-friend. Or Dutch "die" (that) and English "die".
However in a pure "false-friends" instance both words would carry outward as well as semantic similarities but no etymologies in common. For example English "bad" and Persian "bad" both convey the same meaning and exactly resemble each other but are by no means derived from the same root. Or Kurdish "neq" and English "neck" both besides their similar definitions look like each other too, but are not etymological cognates.
It is an American, to my knowledge, phenomenon in which "milliard" gave way to "billion". But its true and logical concept is still remained in British English as well as in the other languages. A "billion" got twice zeros compared to that of a "million" and "trillion" got three times as many zeros as a "million". By the way "bi-" means "two" and "tri-" means "three".
