Tag Archives: false friends
Don’t Let It Confuse You: The German Words All and Sämtlich Posted by Sten on Mar 11, 2022
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…
Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Bekommen Posted by Sten 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…
Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Mode Posted by Sten 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…
Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Stall Posted by Sten 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…
What’s The Difference? Man and Mann In German Posted by Constanze on Jun 24, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at two German words that often confuse learners – man and Mann. By the end of this post you’ll be able to recognise the difference between these two words, and be able to use them in the correct way. Let’s get started! Mann vs man The confusion about these two…
Writing ‘The’ In German Gets Account Blocked Posted by Constanze on Nov 20, 2019
Guten Tag! There are many false friends between German and English. False friends are words we recognise in German because they are spelled the same as an English word. They do not, however, mean the same as the English word. Sometimes this mix-up with false friends can lead to confusion, laughter, embarrassment… and sometimes, it…
Es Sei Denn: The German For ‘Unless’ Posted by Constanze on Nov 28, 2018
Guten Tag! Sometimes when learning a language you will come across little turns of phrase that you just can’t get your head around. Maybe they look like they should mean one thing, but they actually mean something totally different. We have looked at false friends on the blog before, which is a similar topic you might…