# False friend



## seitt

Greetings,

How do you say ‘false friend’, please?

It means a word in a foreign language which seems easy enough but which actually has a completely different meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend#Shared_etymology

There are quite a few between Turkish and English, for example: ‘bit’ in English means ‘piece’ but in Turkish it means ‘louse’.

All the best, and many thanks,

Simon


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## Rallino

I'm afraid we don't have an exact term for it in Turkish. If I were to translate a sentence like: _The false friends between English and Turkish_, I would formulate it something along the lines of:_ İngilizce ve Türkçedeki eşsesli*/eşyazımlı** sözcükler._ 

_*eşsesli: if the words are pronunced the same
**eşyazımlı: if the words are written the same (but have different pronunciations)_


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## seitt

Many thanks, super.


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## dawar

We have a lot of false-friends between french and english (faux-ami).
For example "actually". but the french word "actuellement" means in fact "currently".

The reason why I'm telling this is that even if their meaning is different, the origin of the word is often the same. But between turkish and english I believe that the concept is a little bit different. The similarities are (in my opinion) based on coincidence. Like your example "bit" is (again in my opinion) just a coincidence.

So my conclusion is that I wouldn't call them false-friends, just homonyms.

And btw, sorry, but I don't have an answer to your initial question


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## BinWord

Rallino said:


> I'm afraid we don't have an exact term for it in Turkish. If I were to translate a sentence like: _The false friends between English and Turkish_, I would formulate it something along the lines of:_ İngilizce ve Türkçedeki eşsesli*/eşyazımlı** sözcükler._
> 
> _*eşsesli: if the words are pronunced the same
> **eşyazımlı: if the words are written the same (but have different pronunciations)_



Dear Rallino,

I think we should dig deeper into this question.
Let's say: estağfurullah. Which we use in our current language as a form of politeness, modestly saying ''don't mention it'', whereas there is a claim that this word from Arabic origin is supposed to mean ''certainly''. (Or we can also diversify our example with Azeri Turkish: düşmek (for them it means ''to land'', for us it means ''to fall'')

Eşsesli, as you said earlier, does not really cover all this. It is generally speaking a rule withing Turkish itself (such as ''at'', meaning both horse and throw).
 We, as Turks, generally tend to paraphrase this type of occurence with a foreign language in a sentence: (if it is borrowed by Turkish speakers from another language: ''Türkçe'ye farklı yerleşmiş kelime...''), (in general terms, my suggestion would be ''her iki dile de farklı olarak yerleşmiş kelime'').
I would not say ''yanlış yerleşmiş'', as this is out of question unless we say antiparantez instead of saying antrparantez (fr. entre-parentheses, eng. between brackets).


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## ancalimon

doesn't bit means piece of knowledge in Turkic?

bitig :  collection of peaces of knowledge ?


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## BinWord

seitt said:


> Greetings,
> 
> How do you say ‘false friend’, please?
> 
> It means a word in a foreign language which seems easy enough but which actually has a completely different meaning.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend#Shared_etymology
> 
> There are quite a few between Turkish and English, for example: ‘bit’ in English means ‘piece’ but in Turkish it means ‘louse’.
> 
> All the best, and many thanks,
> 
> Simon



Simon, I am not sure the English ''bit'' and the Turkish ''louse'' can ever be categorised as false friend and in this respect you really mean ''eşsesli /homonym'' . These two words have no historical attachment to each other.
I can give you an example of a real false friend with English: German....

The word for ''mobile'' or ''cell phone'' (depending on your native country American or British) is ''Handy'' in German....


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## er targyn

BinWord said:


> Simon, I am not sure the English ''bit'' and the Turkish ''louse'' can ever be categorised as false friend and in this respect you really mean ''eşsesli /homonym''.


Aren't false friends a pair of words in _related_ languages?
Isn't the term "homonym" used for words in the _same_ language?


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## BinWord

Yes er targyn.

This is what I have meant.


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## er targyn

ancalimon said:


> doesn't bit means piece of knowledge in Turkic?
> 
> bitig :  collection of peaces of knowledge ?



It means book, writing and is from the verb bit-, biti- "to write", which is believed to come from Chinese.


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## Rallino

BinWord said:


> Dear Rallino,
> 
> [...]
> 
> We, as Turks, generally tend to paraphrase this type of occurence with a foreign language in a sentence: (if it is borrowed by Turkish speakers from another language: ''Türkçe'ye farklı yerleşmiş kelime...''), (in general terms, my suggestion would be ''her iki dile de farklı olarak yerleşmiş kelime'').



Yes, that is indeed a better translation.


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## er targyn

I recalled two cases of confusion: 1.Misafir is a guest, but Kazakhs from China once told me that they understand it as a beggar 
2. Fuqaro is Arabic "poor (men)", in Uzbek it means citizen


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## jcpjcp

öt - "pass" in Kazakh and Kyrgyz

öt - "chirp" in Turkish


sırtında - "outside of something" in Kazakh

sırtında - "on the back of someone" in Turkish


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## jcpjcp

söyle - "tell" in Turkish

söyle - "speak" in Kazakh


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## Gemmenita

seitt said:


> Greetings,
> 
> How do you say ‘false friend’, please?
> 
> It means a word in a foreign language which seems easy enough but which actually has a completely different meaning.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend#Shared_etymology
> 
> There are quite a few between Turkish and English, for example: ‘bit’ in English means ‘piece’ but in Turkish it means ‘louse’.
> All the best, and many thanks,
> 
> Simon



Merhaba Seitt,
I know what is false friend and I am sure you know what it is since you explained well and  I agree with dawer about french-english.
Therefore, as I have understood from your question, you are looking for the word "false friend" in turkish:
I wonder why you didn't look at its turkish translation in the site your presented, here:

or directly here:
http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalancı_eşdeğer

Where it is written "Yalancı eşdeğerler" for false friends. 

...the only help I can have for you on this subject.


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