Have you ever had a false friend? yes, that person who seems trustworthy and a good person but when you really need your friend, he or she doesn’t appear, yes, I know, we could expand the topic because I am sure you have many experiences about like me, but in this occasion we will talk about false friends according to the English grammar. A false friend is an english word that could be confused for language learners because it looks similar or sounds similar to a word in spanish. Another way to name those words are false cognates. As Spanish speakers, when we are learning English, some words are easy to understand and for that are easy to memorize too, like:
- Hospital, because it is exactly writed like in Spanish, and it just changes the pronunciation a little.
- False, in this word just change one word, and it is easy to get it.
- Animals, students always understand this word for the first time because the pronunciation and the spelling are similar to the word in Spanish.
There are a lot of good friends in English grammar which are not difficult. The difficult ones are the false friends because they sabotage us instead of helping us. That is why in this blog we will talk about them. It is very important that you take notes of this word so you take precautions. If you pay attention to these words they will help you to impress when you speak in English. Let’s check five of them:
- Fabric
When you hear this word you may think immediately in a building where goods are manufactured by machines, but it is not, you are confusing fabric with Factory or Industry. So what does fabric mean? Fabric means the material of cloth or other things made by fibers. For example:
I really prefer to buy fabrics in parisina than in modatelas because fabrics there are cheaper.
- Rope
You could imagine your pants, shorts, shoes and t-shirts, but that meaning is incorrect. Blouses, dresses, socks, jeans, etc, are called cloth. The correct way to use the word rope is with a length of strong cord, let me give you an example:
When I was a child I used to jump with a brown rope in the yard.
- Carpet
I hope you never use this word to refer to that object in the office which helps us to keep papers well. We use folders to keep and organize important documents. Carpet means a floor or stair covering made from thick woven fabric. One example could be:
Ariana Grande looked awesome in the red carpet of the past MTV show
- Embarrassed
I was embarrassed when I was sixteen years old. What did you think? No, I didn’t have a baby, I just had an uncomfortable moment. You might imagine I was pregnant in the past, pregnant is the word when a woman is going to have a baby. Now I will give you and example with the word embarrassed to get the meaning clear:
When I fell down on the street It was an embarrassing moment
- success
In english success describes the situation when somebody achieves his or her dreams or goals, that person is successful. On the other hand, we could use event or happening to mean the occurrence of a series of events. Here we have some examples:
success usually comes when you work day by day
I do not like to remember bad events
I hope you found this blog interesting and also I suggest you study more false friends, because I am sure there are a lot of words that can help you to improve your English.