A correspondent writes to ask if I have written anything about
'false friends', and their role in language learning and
teaching. Just in case some readers of this blog haven't
encountered the term, false friends are cases where a word in
one language resembles a word in another, and a learner assumes
that, because the two words look the same, they therefore mean
the same. So, abusif in French doesn't mean 'abusive' (which
would be injurieux) but 'incorrect, illegal, unauthorized,
excessive...' Linguists do routinely collect examples of false
friends, and I'm no exception. But I've never written a book
about them - unlike, say, Philip Thody and Howard Evans, who
compiled an excellent collection of French/English 'faux amis' a
few years ago - Faux Amis & Key Words (Athlone Press, 1985). The
Munich-based English-teaching magazine Spotlight also regularly
lists German false friends. The nearest I've got to writing on
this subject is in relation to Shakespeare. I used to do a
column in the Times Educational Suppl