False friends, regionalisms-what do you do? (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

False friends, regionalisms-what do you do?
Tags: False friends \| Learning Experience \| Etymology \| Linguistic relationships \| Dialect \| Learning Strategy \| Vocabulary learning
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

13 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Gala
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4339 days ago
229 posts - 421 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian

Message 9 of 13

09 September 2012 at 7:40pm | IP Logged

Your understanding is not the etymology that my unabridged actual hardback dictionary
gives (which is what I cited above,) so I checked online, where I found both versions.
This (maybe)clears it up, although I'm more inclined to trust my dictionary than online
sources:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/avocado

Scroll down to "origins," and you'll see that they say it was as a result of some sort
of confusion of Mex. Spanish "aguacate" (from ahuacatl) with "abogado" (from
"advocatus")that produced the word avocado. I have to say that I really don't
understand why anyone would ever have confused the 2, but since aguacate and avocado do
mean the same thing, while advocatus (or abogado) and avocado absolutely don't I'm sure
that the Nahuatl was somehow involved in the process.

The fact that your sources say that "ahuacatl" literally meant testicle doesn't
surprise me at all, and doesn't make me doubt that the same word was used for avocados
in pre-Colombian times. I doubt that anyone really knows which meaning came first. In
contemporary Mexico "huevo" means testicle at least as much (and perhaps even more) as
it means egg, even though the latter meaning is the original one.

hrhenry wrote:

Gala wrote:

Well, "two or more words in different languages that
share a common
ancestor"
really does apply to pairs such as avocado/aguacate: the common ancestor
(ahuactl) just happens to be a parent that became one due to a relatively recent
linguistic "rape," so to speak.

Not really. Aguacate, from my understanding, comes from the Nahuatl word for "testicle"
(ahuácatl), while Avocado comes from Latin "advocatus" (advocate). Two completely
different language families.

Never mind the widely used "palta" (Quechua) in parts of South America.

R.

Edited by Gala on 09 September 2012 at 7:44pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6386 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 10 of 13

09 September 2012 at 9:34pm | IP Logged

The Russian word for egg has the same additional meaning:)

Gala wrote:

My theory is that, since L2's operate differently in the brain than L1, perhaps they compete for brain-space (so to speak) with each other more fiercely than they do with L1, with the strongest L2 tending to emerge victorious. I have no solutions to offer, other than just to say that extra effort and time must be spent, but I'll be watching this thread with interest.

Or in other words, sometimes there is some sort of a "general foreign" mode in the brain. I've even experienced that with (English and) Finnish, which was technically my 4th foreign language, after German and Latin (which it quickly surpassed). I can't advise anything specifically about false friends/false transparent words, but in general the best solution is facing the problem and forcing yourself to switch between languages. Some specific things I do are using L3-L4 dictionaries (and/or not using the base language of the dictionary in Anki/word lists), doing LR with two foreign languages (sometimes with the audio in the stronger one), using foreign textbooks (including Assimil) or simply alternating a lot in the short term (lyricstraining.com, twitter, simply listening to music on shuffle). I also avoid translation exercises and only translate when it's for someone else's benefit.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4457 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes

Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

Message 11 of 13

16 September 2012 at 5:47pm | IP Logged

As for FALSE FRIENDS,
most Spanish-Portuguese dictionaries made in Brazil have marks (DO NOT CONFUSE WITH or IT"S NOT SAID LIKE THIS), and at the end they give you a list of FALSE FRIENDS ;)
1 person has voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6386 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 12 of 13

16 September 2012 at 6:10pm | IP Logged

But how do you acquire/learn these lists? :) That's an overwhelming amount of information.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6386 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 13 of 13

08 March 2014 at 3:12pm | IP Logged

And I think I have my answer for learning things that come in lists. (I mean the post about Tintin etc)

For related languages (especially Portuguese and Spanish), I think I'll even write sentences side by side. I won't use the same ones but using a double page/centrefold for more than one language should be good for learning things from multilingual lists.

Edited by Serpent on 08 March 2014 at 3:38pm

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