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Tag Archives: False Cognates

Don’t Let It Confuse You: The German Words All and Sämtlich Posted by on Mar 11, 2022

sämtlich all alle don't let it confuse you false friends brexit

When you see the German word All, you might easily see the English word all – however, this appears to be a false friend! So, what does All mean? And how do you say all? And what’s with sämtlich? There are multiple answers to these questions, so let’s have a look at the German word All and all. Click here…

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Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Bekommen Posted by on May 27, 2021

There are always words in a language that sound familiar, and so you may be tempted to think that the word must mean something similar to what you already know. These words are known as false friends or false cognates. In the series Don’t Let It Confuse You!, we take a look at such words in…

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Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Mode Posted by on Dec 3, 2020

In this series, we look at words that exist in both English and German, but really don’t mean what you might expect them to, so-called false friends. We also look at words that sound or look deceivingly similar. Today, we look at a classic false friend, though. It’s quite fashionable – Mode! For previous posts…

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Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Stall Posted by on Oct 15, 2020

In this series, we look at words that exist in English, but have a completely different meaning in German, so-called false friends. But we also look at words that sound or look deceivingly similar. Today, we look at a word that really means something else than you might think – Stall! For previous posts in this…

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Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Dose Posted by on Feb 23, 2019

Today, we start a new series on the blog, called Don’t Let It Confuse You! In this series, we will look at words or phrases that seem to mean the exact same thing in English, simply because they are spelled the same or sound the same. These are also known as “false cognates”, in German known as Fauxami (a “false…

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