You can’t trust them. They deceive you so easily. I’m talking about false friends! They may look like friends, but they’re not!
Actually, I am referring to what are more properly known as “false cognates” – words that appear or sound similar in two different languages but actually mean something different. Actually, “actually” is one of those!
The list of false cognates between Spanish and English is long. I’ll give a few examples:
The Spanish actual and its adverb form actualmente are equivalent to the English current and currently respectively. In English, actual and actually mean real/true and really/truly. If you say to an English speaker, “Joe Biden is the actual president of the United States,” it sounds as if someone else is pretending to be the president, while Biden is the real president.
If a man says he is embarazado, he will probably end up being embarrassed. He just told everyone he was pregnant.
If you study English or Spanish long enough, you will realize that realizar doesn’t mean to realize in the sense of “come to an awareness of.” It means “to do” or “make reality,” as in “to realize one’s dreams.” I eventually realized that the way to say “realized” in the sense that I have used it in this sentence is “Me dí cuenta.”
These are just a few of the many examples of false friends that exist between English and Spanish. You just can’t trust them.
