False friends Lesson 35 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Many French words look just like English ones and mean the same, like animal or table - but some look friendly and then trick you: these are called false friends (faux amis). 1 Raisin looks like raisin, but in French it means a juicy grape; a librairie looks like a library, but it is a bookshop; and attendre looks like attend, but it means to wait. 2 Picture breakfast in a French hotel: you want jam, so you try to make up a word from English "preserve" - and your teacher jumps in fast, because that word, préservatif, is a famously embarrassing false friend that does not mean jam at all; the word you want is confiture. 3 The safe habit is simple: when a French word looks too easy, check it before you use it. 4 A false friend can still be a good friend once you know it: un car is a coach, la monnaie is your change, and la lecture is reading time, not a boring talk. 5 Faux amis, false friends, are French words that look like English words but mean something different. 6 Le raisin means grapes; a dried raisin is un raisin sec. 7 Jam is la confiture; préservatif is an embarrassing false friend and does not mean jam. 8 Sensible in French means sensitive (easily upset or touched); "sensible" in English is raisonnable or sage. 9 Attendre means to wait: J'attends le bus means "I'm waiting for the bus". 11 Un car is a coach for trips; a car is une voiture and a city bus is un bus. 12 La monnaie means change or coins; money in general is l'argent. 13 Blessé means hurt: "Tu es blessé ?" means "Are you hurt?", and une blessure is an injury. 14 To say you are full after a meal, French people say "Je n'ai plus faim" (I'm not hungry any more); "je suis plein" sounds odd. 15 La location means rental or hire: location de vélos means bike hire; a place is un endroit or un lieu. 16 La lecture means reading; a long talk is une conférence or un cours. ← previous France and the French-speaking worldnext → English words that came from French↑ back to French This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/35-false-friends/