Lost in Translation: Romance False Friends

You’ve done it. You’ve put in the hours, mastered the subjunctive in Spanish, and can now confidently navigate a tapas bar in Madrid. On a celebratory trip to Rome, you feel a surge of confidence. Italian is just sing-songy Spanish, right? You sit down for dinner, ready to impress your new friends. When a friend feels a little flustered, you try to relate, saying you feel “embarazada.” The table goes silent. Your friend isn’t pregnant, and you’ve just announced to everyone that you are.

Welcome to the treacherous, hilarious, and fascinating world of Romance language false friends.

These linguistic traps, known as faux amis in French or falsos amigos in Spanish, are words that look and sound similar across Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese but have diverged to mean something completely different. They are the charming, chaotic cousins in the language family tree, born from the same Latin ancestor but who went their separate ways. Understanding them isn’t just about avoiding embarrassment; it’s a masterclass in the subtle evolution of language.

So, Why the Confusion? From One Rome to Many

All Romance languages are descendants of Vulgar Latin, the everyday language spoken by soldiers, settlers, and merchants of the Roman Empire. As the empire fragmented, the Latin spoken in Iberia, Gaul, and the Italian peninsula began to drift. Over centuries, local influences, invasions, and simple linguistic change caused words to shift in meaning. A word might become more specific in one region, broader in another, or take on a completely new metaphorical sense.

These false friends are the living fossils of that divergence, a testament to the fact that languages are not static monoliths but ever-changing organisms.

The False Friends Hall of Fame: A Guided Tour

Let’s dive into some of the most common and confusing false friends that every learner should have on their radar. We’ve organized them by the level of potential disaster.

Category 1: The Socially Hazardous

These are the words that can turn a normal conversation into an awkward silence or an unintended confession. Handle with care!

• The Pregnancy Predicament:
  • In Spanish, embarazada means “pregnant.”
  • In Italian, imbarazzata means “embarrassed” or “ashamed.”
  • In French, embarrassé also means “embarrassed.”
  • In Portuguese, embaraçada means “embarrassed” or “tangled up.”
  • The Fix: If you’re feeling red-faced, the word you’re looking for is apenado/a or avergonzado/a in Spanish.
• The Sickness Mix-Up:
  • In Spanish, constipado means you have a cold (a stuffy nose).
  • In French (constipé), Italian (costipato), and Portuguese (constipado), it means you are “constipated.” A very different problem.
  • The Fix: In Spanish, if you mean the latter, you’d say estreñido/a. In the other languages, a cold is a rhume (FR), raffreddore (IT), or resfriado (PT).
• The Safety First Fumble:
  • In Spanish and Portuguese, preservativo means “condom.”
  • In Italian, preservativo can technically mean the same, but it’s far more commonly used to mean a “preservative” in food. The common word for condom is profilattico.
  • The Fix: A simple but crucial difference to remember, depending on whether you’re in a supermarket or a pharmacy.

Category 2: The Culinary Catastrophes

Get these wrong, and you might end up with a very strange meal indeed.

• Butter vs. Beast of Burden:
  • In Italian, burro is the creamy, delicious “butter” you spread on your bread.
  • In Spanish, burro is a “donkey.”
  • The Fix: If you want butter in Spain, ask for mantequilla. Unless you genuinely want a donkey on your toast, which we don’t recommend.
• Oil vs. Vinegar:
  • In Spanish, aceite means “oil” (from Arabic az-zayt).
  • In Italian, aceto means “vinegar” (from Latin acetum).
  • The Fix: The Italian word for oil is olio. Asking for aceite on your salad in Italy will get you a very sour surprise.
• Going Up or Going Out?
  • In Italian, salire means “to go up”, “to ascend”, or “to get on” (a bus).
  • In Spanish, salir means “to go out” or “to leave.”
  • The Fix: Telling your Italian friends “Salgo con te” means “I’ll go up with you”, not “I’ll go out with you” (that would be Esco con te).

Category 3: The Descriptively Deceptive

These words deal with qualities and descriptions, and mixing them up can lead to some serious confusion about what you’re trying to say.

• Long vs. Wide:
  • In Spanish, a road can be larga, meaning it is “long.”
  • In Italian, a road can be larga, meaning it is “wide.”
  • The Fix: The word for “long” in Italian is lungo/a. The word for “wide” in Spanish is ancho/a. A classic mix-up of dimensions.
• Delicious vs. Weird:
  • In Spanish, exquisito is a high compliment, meaning “exquisite” or “delicious.”
  • In Portuguese, esquisito means “weird”, “strange”, or “odd.”
  • The Fix: Complimenting your Portuguese host’s cooking by calling it esquisito will not get you invited back. The word you want is delicioso or requintado.

More Than a Mistake: A Window into Language

So, should you despair? Absolutely not. False friends are not a sign of failure but a beautiful quirk of linguistic history. They remind us that even the closest of sister languages have their own unique personalities and stories.

Encountering a false friend is a rite of passage for any language learner. The initial embarrassment quickly gives way to a “huh, that’s interesting” moment. It forces you to listen more carefully, to question assumptions, and to appreciate the rich tapestry of the Romance family. So go forth, make mistakes, have a laugh, and remember: next time you’re in Italy, ask for mantequilla on your bread. Or don’t. A story about ordering a donkey for breakfast is a far better travel anecdote.