True false friends 2

[Linguaphile]

Viineri on tuore ja makea. The pastry is fresh and sweet.
Viiner on toores ja mage. The sausage is raw and bland.

viineri danish pastry
viiner wiener, boiled sausage

tuore fresh
toores raw

makea sweet
mage bland, saltless

[Linguaphile]

pulm (pulmad) wedding
pulm (pulmaq) understanding, wit; pulmama to understand, to know

The related pulma (pulmat) trouble, problem has already been mentioned.

[Linguaphile]

As is often the case, Spanish has a meaning that is the same as the English one and then other meanings that are false friends:

alternate to happen by turns (one and then the other, repeatedly)
alternar to happen by turns; to socialize, interact

reserved set aside for a particular person or group
reservado set aside for a particular person or group; classified; private; secretive; discrete

[Linguaphile]

lapse temporary failure; gap in time; pause in continuity
lapso temporary failure; time between two events
Almost the same, but the small difference means that if you do something with a six-month lapse or un lapso de seis meses, in English you are doing it with a six-month gap of not doing it, while in Spanish you can be simply doing it for six months.

notoriously infamously
notoriamente markedly, obviously

[Linguaphile]

These two are similar enough to appear in the same contexts and just different enough to cause some really weird imagery when mixed up:

matas bushes, shrubs, plants
mätas sod, turf, low grass-covered or moss-covered mound

Like this:
Mättalt mättale hüpates sai kuiva jalaga üle sooniku.
Jumping from mound to mound, he managed to cross the wetlands without getting his feet wet.
But if you think of the Spanish meaning instead, then he's jumping from bush to bush, which is just... not the same at all, but still possible enough to make sense (which means I might not catch my mistake and will go on thinking he's leaping into shrubs to avoid the water, however weird that might look).

Or
Istus mätta otsa.
He sat on the moss-covered mound.
Or on the top of the shrubs, because why not?

And:
Se arroja inmediatamente al suelo y permanece en posición de cuerpo a tierra detrás de unas matas, observando con detenimiento la escena.
He immediately throws himself to the ground and stays down laying flat against the ground behind some shrubs, carefully observing the scene.
Except that if you think of the Estonian meaning instead, then he's hiding behind a mound of turf, which again makes just enough sense to lead you into that trap, but really, that's not a very good hiding place!

[Linguaphile]

tutor person who teaches in a one-on-one setting
tutor guardian, mentor, tutor (as in English above), academic counselor, plant stake

[Linguaphile]

peatus stop
peaje toll, tollbooth

Not a whole lot alike, right? But this is the type of word I'm most likely to actually mix up. I guess it's because I'm used to looking for stems and roots and then processing the suffixes, infixes or other word parts separately. So in this case, I read peaje as "stop" rather than "tollbooth", because it made perfect sense (think about it: you do have to stop at a tollbooth!) because I was apparently thinking of peatus, which ultimately has a stem of pea-. Spanish -je and Estonian -[t]us are both noun-forming suffixes. (In Estonian the -t- is actually a verbal infix which should have meant that any hypothetical Spanish-Estonian hybrid word would have been something more like *peataje rather than *peaje, but apparently my subconscious brain doesn't process details like that fast enough to avoid momentary misreadings like this one, so it happens anyway.)
Then most of the time I can't even figure out why I've made the mistake until a while later, then it's like "oh geez, I was thinking of Estonian peatus wasn't I?" It's that subconscious, so that I don't even realize right away where the wrong meaning came from.

[Linguaphile]

adjust to modify, to change
ajustar to adjust (to modify, to change), to set, to fit, to conform to

La mayor parte de ese comunicado no se ajusta a la verdad ni a la realidad.
The majority of this communication conforms to neither the truth nor reality.

[Linguaphile]

time passage of a measurable period ( tid)
time hour; lesson

[Linguaphile]

Originally it was the false cognates kab "shopping center, marketplace" (Hmong Njua) and gab "week, day of the week, street" (Hmong Dou) that brought this to my attention but then I expanded it to include other etymologically-related words. The Hmong forms gab, kab, kiab all involve regular sound and orthographical changes so despite the different spellings they are considered "the same word". The word entered the various Hmong languages as a Chinese loan (early Mandarin *kjaj) and originally referred to outdoor street markets held once a week; in Laos/Thailand the meaning was expanded to include permanent markets and indoor shopping centers (likely under the influence of the Lao and Thai words listed below, which mean "to sell"), while in China the word retained the meaning "street" (no longer used in Hmong varieties of Laos and Thailand) and in some Hmong varieties in China the meaning was expanded to also mean "week" due to the weekly schedule of the markets in question.
(Note that word-final -b and -l in Hmongic languages indicate the tone, and are not pronounced)

街 (jiē) market, fair, street (Mandarin)
街 (gai) market, fair, street, block (Cantonese)
街 (kiâi) market, fair, street (Hakka)
gai street (Zhuang; China)
gaail to sell, to betray; street (Bouyei; China)
caib market (Sat dialect; China)
cab market (Dlo dialect; China)
gab outdoor market, street, week, day of the week (Dou dialect; China)
gab outdoor market, week (Sou dialect; China)
kab market, marketplace, shop, shopping center (Njua dialect; Laos)
kiab market, marketplace, shop shopping center (Daw dialect; Laos/Thailand)
ขาย (kʰaːj) to sell
ຂາຍ (kʰaːj) to sell
ၶၢႆ (kʰaːi) to sell

[Linguaphile]

hiljaa quietly, silently, slowly
hilja quietly, silently
hilja late

[Naava]

hiljaa quietly, silently, slowly
hilja quietly, silently
hilja late

And then...
hiljan lately

[Linguaphile]

jearaldat question
järeldus conclusion, inference
järeldama to conclude, to infer

jæraliđ to question
järele behind
järelmid aftermaths

järki reason, sense
järk rank
järkeä right now, immediately

järg only
järg continuation, sequence, well-being

hiljaa quietly, silently, slowly
hilja quietly, silently
hilja late

And then...
hiljan lately

The song I posted yesterday was funny: ajetaan kovaa, ollaan ihan hiljaa: "let's drive fast, let's be quite late"....

Not to mention this one from the same line of the song:
iha lust, desire, hunger
ihan quite, totally
I mean, sure, Finnish has ihana and ihailla too. But the thing is that Estonian doesn't have any cognate with a meaning similar to Finnish ihan.

[Naava]

hiljaa quietly, silently, slowly
hilja quietly, silently
hilja late

And then...
hiljan lately

The song I posted yesterday was funny: ajetaan kovaa, ollaan ihan hiljaa: "let's drive fast, let's be quite late"....

It'd work better if you had misheard it like I did: ajetaanko vaan, ollaan ihan hiljaa = shall we just drive around, let's be very late

My favourite is this ad of a Finnish supermarket chain that says they're "good but cheap".
halpa cheap
halb bad

[Linguaphile]

hiljaa quietly, silently, slowly
hilja quietly, silently
hilja late

And then...
hiljan lately

The song I posted yesterday was funny: ajetaan kovaa, ollaan ihan hiljaa: "let's drive fast, let's be quite late"....

It'd work better if you had misheard it like I did: ajetaanko vaan, ollaan ihan hiljaa = shall we just drive around, let's be very late

My favourite is this ad of a Finnish supermarket chain that says they're "good but cheap".
halpa cheap
halb bad

Those are both very good!!

[Linguaphile]

depart to leave
departir to converse

[aleph.0]

affaire
affare - business, deal, bargain

[lu:ka]

affaire
affare - business, deal, bargain

Affare may also mean an undefined thing as in Puoi passarmi quell'affare, per favore? (Can you pass me that thing please?)

And, if I am not wrong, the English spelling is affair: With the final -e is a French loan with a narrower spectrum of meaning (i.e. love affair) just as in Italian.

Affair and affare are often perfect synonyms as in:

• Ministero degli affari esteri (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
• L'affare watergate (The Watergate affair)

[linguoboy]

And, if I am not wrong, the English spelling is affair: With the final -e is a French loan with a narrower spectrum of meaning (i.e. love affair) just as in Italian.

You are correct. I don't recall ever seeing the spelling affaire in contemporary English except in longer unassimilated borrowings such as affaire d'honneur.

Incidentally, the use of affaire to mean "unspecified thing" is found in North American French. (This is the usual word for "thing" in most varieties of Louisiana French, for instance, corresponding roughly to European French truc.)

[lu:ka]

Incidentally, the use of affaire to mean "unspecified thing" is found in North American French. (This is the usual word for "thing" in most varieties of Louisiana French, for instance, corresponding roughly to European French truc.)

That's interesting, as a matter of fact the Italian affare can be translated into French as truc (depending on the context, of course).