True false friends

[Osias]

No google só tem resultado de dicionários. No Tuíter os posts são todos sobre como tem gente que não conhece a palavra.

[vijayjohn]

awa - compassion, mercy, pity
awa - sea
awa - river, creek, stream
awa - hour

[Linguaphile]

laos in stock
Laos

Of course, "Laos" is the name of the country in many other languages as well. It is even the name of the country in Estonian. Which is probably why I find it amusing to see the following on product webpages:
Saadavus: Laos
("Saadavus" means "availability". So, "Availability: In Stock" or "Availability: Laos.") Makes you wonder, why are so many of these products listed on Estonian websites if they are only available in southeast Asia?

[vijayjohn]

mosquito
Mískitu - Miskito

[Ciarán12]

frigideira - frying pan
fridge, refrigerator

"Amor, onde que tá a carne?"
"Coloquei na frigideira."
*looks in the fridge, two seconds later remembers... fucking false friends...*

[Linguaphile]

frigideira - frying pan
fridge, refrigerator

fregadero kitchen sink

"Amor, onde que tá a carne?"
"Coloquei na frigideira."
*looks in the fridge sink, two seconds later remembers...

[vijayjohn]

hot (hots?)
hotz - cold
(perhaps also hots - sound, noise)

[linguoboy]

hot (hots?)

You can "have the hots" for someone. And "red hots" are the name of both a kind of sausage and a cinnamon candy.

[vijayjohn]

hot (hots?)

You can "have the hots" for someone. And "red hots" are the name of both a kind of sausage and a cinnamon candy.

I know, but I wasn't sure whether that was a good candidate for a true false friend in this context. Is it hot that's a true false friend with hotz, is it hots that's a true false friend, or is it both?

[linguoboy]

I know, but I wasn't sure whether that was a good candidate for a true false friend in this context. Is it hot that's a true false friend with hotz, is it hots that's a true false friend, or is it both?

I don't particularly want to open this can of worms again, but I don't consider either a good candidate for a "true false friend". Who expects a word in Basque, of all languages, to share an origin with an English word?

[vijayjohn]

It did confuse me when I learned it.

[linguoboy]

It did confuse me when I learned it.

Fair enough then. I was just confirming that there are, in fact, lexical items in English spelled "hots".

[Car]

elle she
ele - he

[Ciarán12]

elle she
ele - he

Even worse (due to the pronunciation) is:
él - he, him
elle - she

[Linguaphile]

elle she
ele - he

Even worse (due to the pronunciation) is:
él - he, him
elle - she

I may have posted this before, but along the same lines (if I can even manage to write it out correctly, because when I try to put them side by side my brain just sort of freezes)....
The French/Estonian ones especially threw me for a loop because I started studying French shortly after I started studying Estonian, and as a result I mixed up the French pronouns embarrassingly often for quite a while, particularly the first two sets below.

sa you (2nd person singular subject pronoun)
sa his, hers, its (3rd person singular possessive pronoun)

ta he, she (3rd person singular subject pronoun)
ta your (2nd person singular possessive pronoun)

ma I (1st person singular subject pronoun)
ma my (1st person singular possessive pronoun)

me we (1st person plural subject pronoun)
me me (1st person singular object pronoun)
me me (1st person singular object pronoun)
me me (1st person singular object pronoun)

te you (2nd person plural subject pronoun)
te you (2nd person singular object pronoun)
te you (2nd person singular object pronoun)

su your (2nd person singular/informal possessive pronoun)
su his, her, their (3rd person singular/plural possessive pronoun); your (2nd person plural/formal possessive pronoun)

All of the Estonian ones are actually the short forms of longer pronouns (sina, tema, mina, meie, teie, sinu), but these short forms are very commonly used.

[Car]

elle she
ele - he

Even worse (due to the pronunciation) is:
él - he, him
elle - she

And yet I've never confused the two, but on Duolingo, I still struggle not to translate ele with she.

While we're at it:
wy - you
wij/ we - we (stressed/ unstressed)
we

[Ciarán12]

vacilar - to fail
vacillate

equivocar-se - to make a mistake
equivocate

[Ciarán12]

cadera hip ( anca)
cadeira chair ( silla)

I was just reading back over this thread and saw this. And it brought to mind the phrase "balança as cadeiras" ("shake your hips"), which I always thought was a weird phrase given that "cadeira" means "chair", but now I'm guessing it's not some weird semantic extension of the word for chair but rather a loan from Spanish...?

[Osias]

vacilar - to fail
vacillate

I think the original meaning is also vacillate and the meaning of failure is something I see mostly in low register/slang/gangsta speak.

[Osias]

cadera hip ( anca)
cadeira chair ( silla)

I was just reading back over this thread and saw this. And it brought to mind the phrase "balança as cadeiras" ("shake your hips"), which I always thought was a weird phrase given that "cadeira" means "chair"

I does mean hips here also, but it's used that way no so often. There was a hit song making a punk with both meanings some years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g442iah1RZM