FALSE FRIENDS

Among the many mistakes I'm making in Spanish, which are too numerous to count, some are simple, little things and some are muy grande. Some words both look and sound like English words, but they really don't mean anything like one another. Sometimes, people refer to these errors as "false friends." "Embarazado" and "Ingles" are like that; if you say you are "embarazado" about something because you are embarrassed, you are actually saying you are pregnant! Or, if, like one of our students Colter, you are telling people about your "ingles," about your speaking English, you're actually talking about your groin muscles; this he did for awhile!

But I'm not saying anyone else is making more errors than I am; after all, I talk a lot, so I'm probably making the most mistakes of anyone! The simplest errors for me are Spanish words that look like English, visual cue errors when I read the word; by that I mean that when I see the word "con," I can't help but think it's against something, but it really means "with," pretty much opposite in meaning. Similarly, "once" still should be followed by "upon a time" to me, but it's the Spanish word for eleven.

Don't even get me started on my errors of the ears; over and over in church yesterday (for the record, I estimate I understood about 6 per cent tops; I gathered that the sermon was about God's love for Gentiles as well as for his chosen, Jewish people), I heard corramos, "let's run," which was immediately followed each time by… no, not a jog, but a prayer (after all, prayers do make more sense in church!). But my ears weren't hearing "orames," which means "let's pray"; they heard a word I knew instead. I'm sure I also heard the preacher say several times something about "una cigala," which I looked up in my dictionary. It means "Norway lobster," which I don't understand even in English, so I'm pretty sure he didn't say that. Once I did figure out— after the fact—that I had heard French, "a mort," meaning "dead" or "died," when, of course, the preacher wasn't speaking French; he was using the verb to love, "amor." Duh!

A harder, yet supposed-to-be-simple, word is "mañana," which can mean tomorrow or in the morning, depending on the words around it, words I may or may not catch. So someone may be talking about something going to happen next week in the morning, and I think the event's tomorrow. Problem.

This false friend discussion reminds me that I've been a false friend to people too at various times through the years. I hate all the hypocritical, nasty, and petty things I've let myself do or think over the years, and I regret them. And I am thankful for my true friends, such as Gayla, my family, and others, who have remained faithful to their flawed friend through the years.