Linguistic false cousins or the danger of a little knowledge

 

[cat with lion in mirror*]

Through historical events, languages encounter each other and leave linguistic marks. Specifically, foreign roots enter a language, often providing a term for a concept that needed a word. However, the meaning of foreign words sometimes takes on a twist. This modification can confuse natives of the original language, who think that they understand the meaning. I will give some examples of this phenomenon, citing sentences in French-English and Hebrew-English.

Let’s start with a nice marketing sentence in French:

J’ignore que vous réussirez à commercialiser et vulgariser le produit.

An English speaker unfamiliar with business French would find this sentence slightly confusing even though the words seem understandable. First of all, why would someone ignore a future event? Second, it is not clear what the concept of commercialization refers to. Is private usage the opposite status? Finally, the purpose of marketing is to add status. Therefore, why would a company want to make it seem vulgar, of low quality? For clarity’s sake, the proper translation of this sentence to English is “I don’t know whether you will succeed in marketing and popularizing the product”.

Going the opposite direction, English to French, we have this fine academic phrase: evolution of a formidable society. A French person with minimal knowledge of English would be unsure of this context here and may misunderstand it. First, evolution in French can also refer to conscious development as compared to evolutionary probability. Second, formidable in French generally means wonderful (see song), which is not true in English where it means strong. Finally, society in French can also refer to an organized business unit, a corporation in English, creating an ambiguity. Therefore, a French person could understand the phrase to indicate the plan  to create a wonderful company. The actual context could be the development of a city state such as Sparta over time, which was a major power at its peak.

Hebrew has also adopted English expressions quite freely over the last 100 years or so but not always retained their original meaning, thus creating a bit of confusion to visitors with minimal Hebrew. Let’s consider this Corona period statement:

לבקש ללבוש פוטר בזמן הסטאז' הוא שאלת קיטבג.

[levakesh lilbosh futer b’zman hastaj hu sha’alat kitbag]

Three words are of interest. What is footer (third word)? In practice, it is a fabric but refers to sweat pants. The stage (fifth word) is not a stage in the context of the theatre or planning but refers to an apprenticeship, as in some parts of Europe. The last term is completely obscure (and admittedly a bit slangy). It does mean a kit bag but refers to a stupid question that one should not ask, as in “Sargeant, do we need to bring our kit bag?”, which leads to all the soldiers having to carry one. So, the phrase means it is not a good idea to ask to be allowed to wear pajamas when you are an apprentice. Clear, right?

It is convenient to know some roots in a foreign language when you need to decipher meanings. However, it is risky to assume that the resulting words have the exact same meaning. A little knowledge can be very dangerous.

* Picture captions allow the blind to fully access the Internet.

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