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False Friends: Their Origin and Semantics in Some Selected Languages Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1833–1849 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma False friends: their origin and semantics in some selected languages Pedro J. Chamizo Domı´ ngueza, Brigitte Nerlichb,* aUniversidad de Ma´laga, Facultad de Filosofı´a y Letras, Departamento de Filosofı´a, Campus de Teatinos, E-2907-Ma´laga, Spain bInstitute for the Study of Genetics, Biorisks and Society, Law and Social Sciences Building, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK Received 22 September 2000; received in revised form 14 January 2002; accepted 15 January 2002 Abstract In this article we want to investigate the semantic (figurative) structures that underlie false friends, especially semantic false friends, in various European languages (Spanish, French, German and English). Chance false friends share the same form but have different etymolo- gies and different meanings in different languages. They can be compared to homonyms in a single natural language. Semantic false friends, by contrast, have the same etymological ori- gin, their meanings differ in different language, but one can still detect semantic relations between them. They can be considered to be cross-linguistic equivalents to polysemous words in a single natural language. The links between their meanings in different languages can be based on metaphor, metonymy and euphemism, but also on specialisation and generalisation. Semantic false friends are the semantic relics of pragmatic language use over time and space. Studying false friends is, however, more than an exercise in diachronic pragmatics. It has important implications for translation and cross-linguistic communication, where an aware- ness of false friends is important together with knowledge of certain pragmatic strategies, which help to avoid misunderstandings or mistranslations. The study of the underlying fig- urative links between false friends also adds a new dimension to cognitive semantics. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: False friends; Semantics; Pragmatics; Metaphor; Metonymy; Idioms; Borrowing * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. J. Chamizo Domi´ nguez), [email protected]. uk (B. Nerlich). 0378-2166/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S0378-2166(02)00024-3 1834 P.J. Chamizo Domı´nguez, B. Nerlich / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1833–1849 1. False friends and their relation to metaphor, metonymy, specialisation, and generalisation Metaphor, metonymy and polysemy have been well explored in synchronic (cog- nitive) linguistics as underlying not only figures of speech but also thought itself. Metaphor, metonymy, generalisation, and specialisation have been studied exhaus- tively in diachronic linguistics as underlying major types of semantic change.1 The same can be said about the phenomena of homonymy and polysemy. However, none of these cognitive and linguistic phenomena have as yet been examined cross- linguistically at any length. Take for example the German word Flanell and the English word flannel. In Ger- man Flanell is used to refer to a certain type of cloth, in English to a certain type of cloth, but also to a cloth with a certain function (a wash-cloth for washing the body).2 The metonymic link that is exploited is the one between material and func- tion.3 Furthermore, flannel can be used metaphorically in English to mean ‘evasive talk’. As this example shows, the two languages seem to have exploited certain meaning potentials in different ways: whereas ‘the German language’ stayed with the ‘literal’ meaning of flannel and did not venture any further into semantic space, ‘the English language’ moved along a metonymically and metaphorically structured semantic path and produced a word with multiple meanings. Take another example: the English word fork and the German word Forke. Again we are dealing with a case of ‘false friends’, that is, words that seem to be the same, or at least very similar, in form and meaning, but, in reality, are not. In this case the false friends are not linked by metonymy (as in Flanell and flannel), but through specialisation, the English fork referring to a spiked instrument for eating, the German one to a spiked instrument for shovelling manure and other things on a farm. Another English–German pair of false friends linked in that way is English hose (a flexible tube for conveying liquid or gas) and German Hose (a tubular garment worn over the legs by men and women, but made from cloth falling away from the leg, not clinging to it). Although in 19th- century English hose could mean both ‘flexible tube’ and ‘female stockings’ [as still in American: panty-hose], the modern English hose only refers to the flexible tube, whereas the German Hose only refers to (fe)male tubular garments you put over your legs. The words have become false friends by specialisation. 1 When speaking of the classification of diachronic semantic changes Geeraerts (1997) refers to the classical quartet of specialisation, generalisation, metonymy, and metaphor. 2 English flannel derived from Welsh gwlan, glwlanen meaning ‘wool’, and was exported as such to the German language. It should be stressed that the case of loanwords (flannel-Flanell) differs somewhat from the semantic divergence of cognates (fork/Forke, hose/Hose), as loanwords are imported because a word is needed to express a certain meaning. But there is no simultaneous need to borrow the whole range of meanings possessed by the loanword in its original language. On this problem, see Section 8, below. 3 ‘‘Metaphor and metonymy are different kinds of processes. Metaphor is principally a way of con- ceiving of one thing in terms of another, and its primary function is understanding. Metonymy, on the other hand, has primarily a referential function, that is, it allows us to use one entity to stand for another. But metonymy is not merely a referential device. It also serves the function of providing understanding.’’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 35) P.J. Chamizo Domı´nguez, B. Nerlich / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1833–1849 1835 In this article we want to investigate how various (related) languages, such as Spanish, French, German, and English, exploit the meaning potentials of words in different ways by looking at the metaphorical, metonymical, etc. structures that underlie false friends and structure diachronic changes over time which lead to false friends. This has implications not only for research into meaning and understanding, for comparative research into semantic and conceptual networks, but also for the teaching and translating of foreign languages, as we shall demonstrate with many examples. Robert Hill has pointed out in his Dictionary of False Friends (1982: i) that false friends are particularly treacherous words when it comes to understanding what somebody speaking another language actually means: Since the early 1960s, when I began teaching English as a foreign language, there has been a marked shift in emphasis in the way we teach, from detailed studies of texts, to methods which encourage the students to talk more. From the beginning, I remember noticing how the meaning of certain English words was repeatedly misunderstood: the context might offer no hint of the fact that words like sympathetic, smok- ing, or control meant something quite different in English from the similar word in other languages. I am ashamed too, when I think how many times I have used fastidious as a reasonable synonym for fussy before I discovered that the former was likely to be understood by all Latins (i.e. speakers of Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian) as irritating, troublesome, or annoying.4 Since ‘‘the context might offer no hint’’, a pragmatic strategy is needed to resolve this sometimes hidden semantic problem. This can be especially problematic when reading a (badly) translated text. Translations of false friends can lead to certain ambiguities which can, however, be exploited themselves in literature to achieve certain effects (cf. for example, Sender, 1994; Daninos, 1990). We can only savour passages that discuss or use false friends (see Section 3, below) if we are made aware of their existence when acquiring or learning a language, and if we are taught how to cope with them when we encounter them in conversation or text. Analysing this type of ambiguity can, therefore, not only contribute to pragmatics of conversations (and misunderstandings), but also to a pragmatics of literature, and to pragmatics of translation. 2. False friends and their relation to homonymy and polysemy Although various classifications of false friends have been proposed in the past (Chamizo, 1999; Carroll, 1992: 101; Trup, 1998: 50–60), we shall concentrate on two 4 Hill is not the only person who has been deceived by fastidious/fastidioso. Similar to Hill’s experience, the analysis of these and other false friends discussed in this article was provoked by incidents and acci- dents that actually happened to/or were observed by the main author or others: ‘‘Es cierto que a veces inclusive te´ rminos similares en dos lenguas no demasiado alejadas entre sı´ tienen sentidos diversos; recue´ rdese la alharaca que se armo´ , tiempo ha, en una reunio´ n de la Sociedad de Naciones cuando un delegado brita´ nico dijo del discurso de un delegado de otra nacio´ n que era fastidious. Fastidious no quiere decir ‘fastidioso’, sino algo ası´ como ‘muy detallado’ y ‘pormenorizado’.’’ (Ferrater Mora, 1970: 21). According to the OED ‘fastidious’ also meant ‘irritating’ in the past. 1836 P.J. Chamizo Domı´nguez, B. Nerlich / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1833–1849 types for the purposes of our paper: 1, chance false friends; and 2, semantic false friends. Chance false friends are those words that are similar or equivalent (graphically and/or phonetically) in two or more given languages, but without there being any semantic or etymological reason for this overlap. The Spanish word misa (holy mass) and the Slovakian one misa (dish) could be regarded as prototypical cases of that kind of false friends.
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