If it has ever happened to you that you rattle off what you think is a perfectly correct sentence in Spanish, only to have the other person just look at you, head cocked to the side with a bewildered look on his or her face, you are not alone! You may have just fallen into the very common trap of the false cognate, also called a false friend: a foreign word that looks or sounds deceptively similar to a word
in English, but whose meaning is entirely different.

I learned to be careful of false cognates the hard way: through personal experience. When I first studied in Mexico in high school, I told my host family “Estoy tan embarazada!” wishing to express my embarrassment over getting sick to my stomach my first night in their home. In fact, I had just informed them that I was “so pregnant”. Years later I saw that my Spanish students made this same mistake all the time.

The following is a partial list
of the most common false cognates to watch out for. Make your own list and add
to it each time you encounter a new one. This will keep you aware of the
pitfalls, and help you avoid misunderstandings.

<tdgrande