Are there more false friends in English with Romance languages or with Germanic languages

English has more false friends with Romance languages than with Germanic languages, primarily due to its extensive borrowing from Latin and French over centuries. Here’s a breakdown of the reasoning:

Romance Languages

• English has borrowed a significant number of words from Latin, French, and other Romance languages, especially after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. These borrowings often retained similar forms but evolved different meanings over time, creating many false friends. For example, the French word actuellement means “currently,” whereas its English cognate “actually” means “in fact” ^{4, 8}.
• Semantic divergence is common between English and Romance languages because borrowed words frequently adapt to new cultural and linguistic contexts in English, leading to mismatches in meaning ⁸.

Germanic Languages

• English shares a closer linguistic ancestry with Germanic languages (e.g., German, Dutch, Norwegian), which reduces the likelihood of false friends. Shared roots often result in similar meanings rather than divergence. However, false friends do exist between English and other Germanic languages due to historical shifts in meaning or phonetic similarities. For instance, the German word Gift means “poison,” while its English cognate “gift” means “present” ⁷.
• False friends are less frequent with Germanic languages because these languages have fewer loanwords in English compared to Romance languages.

Conclusion

The greater prevalence of false friends between English and Romance languages stems from extensive borrowing and subsequent semantic changes. In contrast, while there are false friends with Germanic languages, they are less common due to shared linguistic roots and fewer loanwords.

References

• Some examples from a corpus investigation of potentially confusing polysemy and false friends in the terminology of music, centred on English and French, with equivalents in five other languages

• “The Translator’s False Friends” in the Financial and Economic Lexicon (Based on the Material of English and Russian Languages).

• False Cognates and Friends between English and Kurdish

• False friends in the romanian and english languages a comparative survey

• Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez. 2007. Semantics and pragmatics of false friends . New York/London: Routledge. Pp. 186. US $125.00 (hardcover).

• Semantic Analysis of «False- Friends»: A Case Study of English and Siin Seereer

• Machine translation: A threat or a promise?

• Tracking Semantic Change in Cognate Sets for English and Romance Languages