Never go to a restaurant in an English speaking country and ask the waiter for “a bloody steak and some raped cheese” to go on your pasta! The waiter would then think you want “un p*** de steak et du fromage dont on a sexuellement abusé”….Imagine his face!! I am not quite sure you will get a desert.
You should ask for to rare steak and grated cheese.
Like in this example you may encounter difficult situation by using false friend or false cognates. There are many, so to avoid any confusing moment I will focus on the most frequent sleeper friendship.
![Bayeux Tapestry scene44 - By Myrabella [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://sobritish.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/blog-william.jpg)
Bayeux Tapestry scene44 – By Myrabella [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Before we start, it is worth giving you a background to understand how French and English mixed. Although English belongs to the Germanic family of Indo-European languages, French, on the other hand belongs to the Romance family. Nonetheless, the influence of French on the English language has been considerable and goes back to 1066 with the Norman conquest lead by William, Duke of Normandy. The result was that Norman French entirely replaced English as the language of the ruling classes and French became the language of the English parliament until 1363. After the English defeat in the Hundred Years War, the English language underwent a major revival based on patriotism coupled with francophobia. Nevertheless, the influence of French continued through the cultural and intellectual cross-fertilization of the Renaissance and then later due to the fact that French was the official language of international diplomacy from 1714 until the First World War.
So it is why the English of the present day is rich in words that have come into the language from French and have changed little in spelling or meaning: “intelligence, instinct, situation, absent, accident” are identical in both languages, whilst others such as diplomacy (diplomatie), adventure (aventure), address (adresse) have changed but little. These are vrais amis—true friends—also called true cognates.
However, there are also a great many false cognates that often cause problems. Well I hope you will enjoy that new section and learn as much as possible!
An open enemy is better than a false friend so let’s discover together which words are false-friends.
