Living not at home

False friends are an established idea in language learning. They link two languages in a deceptive way. They are pairs of words, one in each language. They are friends because they’re similar in sound or spelling. They’re false because their meaning is significantly different. They look like effective translations but they're not.  Two classic examples are embaraçada – embarazada and préservatif – preservative .     embaraçada (Portuguese) means embarrassed     embarazada (Spanish) means pregnant     préservatif (French) means a contraceptive     preservative (English) means a food additive I’m proposing a related idea: unreliable friends . These are pairs of words which link two languages and translate each other, but do so with some slippage. I like unreliable friends because they foreground the way languages borrow words and repurpose them. The idea of correct English or correct Portuguese is a fundamental misunders...

How do we remember words? How many reminders do we need before the link between sound and meaning is stable and permanent in our minds? My TEFL training claimed it took between seven and fifteen repetitions to learn a new word. I've noticed that as well as repetition, embarrassment aids my memory. Embarrassment creates a strong memory and the new word is baked into that memory.   One example: I learnt the word bolor from my youngest child. It was in a graphic novel and she explained that it translated as mould . (Translation of the speech bubbles: frame one –  Dad, I think you should let go of your screens and find something to do . Frame two –  The weather's too good to stay indoors gathering mould. )   I repeated bolor to myself around the house but the first time I used the word in conversation, I fluffed it. It happened like this. At the housing charity I met a Greek art conservator. She was doing an internship in Portugal. Speaking in English, she t...