A false friend is an English word that looks or sounds like a Turkish word but means something else. In English, "pasta" is spaghetti and macaroni, while in Turkish it means cake. An English "basket" is something you carry, while a Turkish "basket" is basketball. Because the word feels familiar, a Turkish child does not stop to check it, and that confidence is exactly where the mistake comes from.
The term comes from French. In 1928, Maxime Koessler and Jules Derocquigny called their book for French learners of English "Les faux amis", the false friends. Turkish and English share plenty of them. Most are words that came into Turkish from French or Italian, with English relatives that grew from the same root and settled on a different meaning.
Fourteen common false friends
| English word | What a Turkish child may think it means | What it actually means |
|---|---|---|
| pasta | cake (Turkish pasta) | spaghetti, macaroni and the like |
| toast | a toasted sandwich (Turkish tost) | toasted bread on its own |
| basket | basketball (Turkish basket) | a container for carrying things |
| tent | an awning (Turkish tente) | a shelter for camping |
| apartment | the whole building (Turkish apartman) | one flat inside a building |
| salon | the living room (Turkish salon) | usually a hairdresser's or beauty salon |
| mark | a brand (Turkish marka) | a school grade (UK), or a sign or stain |
| college | a private school (Turkish kolej) | university (US), or education after 16 (UK) |
| fabric | a factory (Turkish fabrika) | cloth, material |
| recipe | a doctor's prescription (Turkish reçete) | instructions for cooking a dish |
| patron | a boss (Turkish patron) | a customer or supporter |
| sympathetic | likeable, charming (Turkish sempatik) | understanding, showing sympathy |
| actual | current, topical (Turkish aktüel) | real |
| petrol | crude oil (Turkish petrol) | fuel for cars (UK) |
The first six are the ones a 9 to 14 year old is most likely to run into. Pasta, toast and basket come from a child's everyday life, and apartment and salon can turn up whenever a lesson describes a home or a town.
Why are they so easy to get wrong?
When the brain sees a familiar shape, it takes the first meaning that comes to mind and moves on. "Salon" instantly brings up the room at home. A child reads "My mother is at the salon", understands that she is in the living room, and never suspects a misunderstanding. A completely foreign word makes a child stop and think. A familiar one does not.
So with a false friend, a child never feels they don't know the word. They think they know it, and never notice that what they know is wrong. Pulling out a meaning that has settled in the wrong place is harder than putting a new meaning into an empty one.
Meaning traps
Some traps come from association rather than spelling. The "nerve" in "nervous" is "sinir" in Turkish, so children translate it as "sinirli", which means angry. But nervous means tense or anxious. Someone saying "I'm nervous" before an exam is worried, not cross. For cross, English uses angry or annoyed.
"Actually" is a similar trap. Through Turkish "aktüel" it gets read as "at the moment", when it means "in fact". For "at the moment", English uses currently or now.
How to teach them
Teach each false friend together with its trap. A card that only says "pasta: makarna" does not break the link in a child's head between pasta and birthday cake. Write two lines on the back: "pasta: makarna", and underneath, "birthday cake: cake". Both meanings then sit side by side, and the child has to choose between them every time.
Funny sentences help too. "For my birthday, my mum made a huge pasta." A giant plate of macaroni for a birthday. The child laughs, and the laugh helps the word stick. Make the last page of the notebook a "traps" page and add to it as new ones turn up. Here is how to make a vocabulary notebook actually work.
When you check, ask in both directions: "What does basket mean?" and "What is sepet in English?" The second question is harder, and it is the one that exposes the trap. English words also trap each other, without any help from Turkish. We collected the most confused pairs, like kitchen and chicken, here.
GetSpeakin sees from a child's answers which word they confuse with which meaning. A false friend does not look like a one-off slip. The same wrong meaning gets chosen for the same word again and again. Seeing that pattern is the first step to practising the word with its real meaning.
An experiment for tonight: pick five words from the table and give your child only the English. "What does pasta mean? What does salon mean?" Note how many trap them, and the next day ask those words again, this time with their traps alongside.
Related: vocabulary memorisation techniques that work, kitchen or chicken?
Try it with your class. GetSpeakin reads every answer and puts the words a child actually needs in front of them. Book a demo for your school.