It came to my mind to create a thread concerning the 'false friends' including all the languages. Maybe the name of false friends is not appropriate for them in this case because rather no e.g. Russian learning Spanish would be mistaken if accidentally some Spanish word sounds the same as some Russian one. But it's interesting, anyway. Perhaps we would call it 'the words which are written the same way in totally different - often very far from each other - languages but mean something completely unalike'. On the other hand it's probably hard to have any knowledge of such words for usually we come across them by chance and only if we understand a little the foreign language we find such word in. But I'll start with one example to show what I mean:
matka - Finnish: 'journey', Polish (and some other Slavic languages) 'mother'
An example from life:
At middle school I had a rather grumpy religion teacher who was much disliked by the class. One day the topic of lesson was 'Mother'. Of course the final target of discussion was the Blessed Virgin. But we started from scratch. Mrs. H. had written 'MOTHER' on the blackboard and each of us was supposed to stand up, come to the blackboard and write a word we associate with the 'mother'. Then, I whispered to my fellow I was sitting with: 'Matka' is 'a journey' in Finnish. Everyone started coming to the board and writing: 'gentleness', 'love', 'caring' and so on. It came my fellow's turn. He rose up and said Matka is also 'a journey' in Finnish... The whole class dismayed, the teacher stood silently with anger in her eyes, and my fellow went to write on the blackboard 'JOURNEY (IN FINNISH)'. That was a fascinating experience showing what advantages give us the knowledge of languages, that was indeed.
It may be not very funny or even pathetic when looked on from an objective perspective but you know... Anyway, if you find the thread stupid, silly or anyhow undeserving existence, don't hesitate to close it.
matka - Finnish: 'journey', Polish (and some other Slavic languages) 'mother'
An example from life:
At middle school I had a rather grumpy religion teacher who was much disliked by the class. One day the topic of lesson was 'Mother'. Of course the final target of discussion was the Blessed Virgin. But we started from scratch. Mrs. H. had written 'MOTHER' on the blackboard and each of us was supposed to stand up, come to the blackboard and write a word we associate with the 'mother'. Then, I whispered to my fellow I was sitting with: 'Matka' is 'a journey' in Finnish. Everyone started coming to the board and writing: 'gentleness', 'love', 'caring' and so on. It came my fellow's turn. He rose up and said Matka is also 'a journey' in Finnish... The whole class dismayed, the teacher stood silently with anger in her eyes, and my fellow went to write on the blackboard 'JOURNEY (IN FINNISH)'. That was a fascinating experience showing what advantages give us the knowledge of languages, that was indeed.
It may be not very funny or even pathetic when looked on from an objective perspective but you know... Anyway, if you find the thread stupid, silly or anyhow undeserving existence, don't hesitate to close it.