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False friends are words in two languages (or letters in two alphabets)〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=To Be a Travel Agent )〕 that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. An example is the English ''embarrassed'' and the Spanish ''embarazada'' (which means ''pregnant''), or the word ''sensible'', which means ''reasonable'' in English, but ''sensitive'' in French and Spanish. The term is a shortened version of the expression "false friend of a translator", the French version of which ('faux amis du traducteur') was introduced by linguists Maxime Kœssler and Jules Derocquigny in 1928,〔()〕 in the book ''Les Faux Amis ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais'' 〔()〕 (''False Friends, or the Pitfalls of the English Vocabulary'', with a sequel, ''Autres Mots anglais perfides''.). There is often a partial overlap in meanings, which creates additional complications. Similar words may also fail to catch all the nuances of each word in both languages. For instance, the French ''demande'' simply means a 'request', which is similar to but also very different from a ''demand'' in English and ''demandar'' in Spanish. The two "false friends" may actually be related, having the same origin, unlike "false cognates", which are similar words in different languages that appear to have a common historical linguistic origin (whatever their current meaning) but actually do not. As well as producing completely false friends, the use of loanwords often results in the use of a word in a restricted context, which may then develop new meanings not found in the original language. For example, ''angst'' means "fear" in a general sense (as well as "anxiety") in German, but when it was borrowed into English in the context of psychology, its meaning was restricted to a particular type of fear described as "a neurotic feeling of anxiety and depression". Also, ''gymnasium'' meant both 'a place of education' and 'a place for exercise' in Latin, but its meaning was restricted to the former in German and to the latter in English, making the expressions into false friends in those languages as well as in Greek, where it started out as 'a place for naked exercise'. ==Implications== False friends can cause difficulty for students learning a foreign language, particularly one that is related to their native language, because students are likely to identify the words wrongly due to linguistic interference. For this reason, teachers sometimes compile lists of false friends as an aid for their students. False friends are also a frequent source of difficulty between speakers of different dialects of the same language. Speakers of British English and American English sometimes have this problem, which was alluded to in George Bernard Shaw's statement "England and America are two countries separated by a common language". For example, in the UK (and in other Commonwealth countries), to "table" a motion means to place it on the agenda (to bring it to the table for consideration), while in the US it means exactly the opposite—"to remove it from consideration" (to lay it aside on the table rather than hold it up for consideration). Similarly, the Spanish word ''limón'' refers to a lemon in some parts of the Spanish-speaking world but a lime in others. A particularly problematic case with false friends occurs when one of the two words is obscene or derogatory (a ,〔Silva Rhetoricae, (Cacemphaton ).〕 Greek for "ill-sounding"). Well-known examples are the words ''fag'' (in British English referring to a cigarette, but in American English is an offensive term for a homosexual), ''root'' (in American and British English a verb meaning "to support, cheer", but in Australian English a verb meaning "to copulate with"), and Spanish ''coger'' (meaning 'to take' in Spain and parts of Central America, but also 'to have sex with' in Mexico and Argentina). ''Fagotto'' in Italian, ''Fagot'' in Dutch and ''Fagott'' in German both mean a bassoon, cognate to a derogatory American English term for a male homosexual. ''手紙'' means "toilet paper" in Chinese, but it means "written message" in Japanese.〔https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%89%8B%E7%B4%99 〕 In some cases this has led to significant controversy, e.g. when Tiger Woods described himself as a "spaz" which in American English simply means a "clumsy person", but in British English is an offensive term for a disabled person. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「false friend」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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