False Cognates — Part 2

I. Theory

In German, there is a wide variety of words that look and sound similar to words we have in English. When these words share a common meaning in both languages, they are known as cognates. However, words that look similar and don’t have the same meaning are known as false cognates or falsche Freunde.

In the following examples, we see that the meaning of the German words in question are not what they seem.

Die meisten Künstler sind ein bisschen kurios. Most artists are a bit strange. Sie tastete in ihrer Tasche nach ihrem Handy. She fumbled around in her bag for her phone. Er hat sein Sohn blamiert, als er ihn vor seinen Freunden ausgeschimpft hat. He embarrassed his son when he scolded him in front of his friends.

II. Falsche Freunde

This lesson will focus on four false cognates: tasten, Fall, kurios and blamieren. For each false cognate, the English definition is provided along with the word it may be confused with. The word in parenthesis is the correct German word for the word in quotation marks.