Yeah, false friends (loan words that don’t mean what they mean in the original language) are super common.
Edit: The definition I gave is wrong, or rather too narrow. Wikipedia says this:
In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning.
Asking what the Spanish word for tortilla is a valid question.
If you ordered a ‘tortilla’ in Spain, you would get an omelette, not a flatbread.
This comment section is like the bellcurve meme.
Tortilla is tortilla in Spanish. Only in Spain, were just a fraction of Spanish speakers live, tortilla is a potato dish.
Potatoes, omelettes, and flatbread? Eh, it’s still food.
Yeah, false friends
(loan words that don’t mean what they mean in the original language)are super common.Edit: The definition I gave is wrong, or rather too narrow. Wikipedia says this:
“embarrassed” is not “embarazo”
Mixing those up would certainly be embarassing, though :D
Example from German: “sensible” is not “sensibel”
also “handy” and “Handy”