A Lesson for Language Learners

If you are a native English speaker studying a foreign language, you will oftentimes come across cognates, words that have similar or exactly the same spelling and pronunciation as their English equivalents, usually because they are from similar etymological origins. For example, in Spanish, the word for "hotel" is hotel . Another example would be the French word for "equality," égalité . In the same vein, Russian also has plenty of cognates: tractor (трактор - "traktor"), actor (актёр - "aktyor"), and planet (планета - "planyeta"), just to name a few.

Knowledge of cognates can lead one down the dangerous path of assumption, though, and the subsequent use of false cognates. The first example of a false cognate I remember learning came while I was studying Spanish a few years back. My professor taught our class never to use the adjective embarazada/o to tell someone we were embarrassed. That word is completely unrelated to our word "embarrassed," but instead means "pregnant." So, you can see that assuming a cognate in certain situations can lead one into a rather -- um -- embarrassing situation

To my recollection, I have never used a false cognate while speaking with my intermediate-level Spanish skills. I have not been so lucky with Russian, unfortunately. Allow me to tell a very brief story of a Russian word for which I will never forget the definition.

While staying in the small town of Lodeynoye Pole, Russia, in the summer of 2008, I played a lot of soccer/football with my students, usually boys between the ages of 12 and 14. I was 23 at the time, so I was always the biggest person on the field. During one of these games, a foul occurred inside the penalty area, meaning there would be a penalty kick against my team. The boys wanted me to be the goalie for the kick because I was the biggest and could cover the most shooting area (any Russian speakers see where this is going yet?). I was fairly clear on what they wanted me to do, but I wanted to confirm, and I tried to do it with my (at the time) very rudimentary Russian language abilities.

I only wanted to say, "Me? Goalie? Now?" in Russian, just to be sure of what was happening. I knew the word for "me" would be "ya." I knew the word for "now" was "seiychas." I also knew that the word for "goal" was pronounced "goal," which led me down that dangerous road of assumption -- I guessed that the word for "goalie" would surely be pronounced "goalie" if the word for "goal" were "goal."

There I was, asking these middle school boys, "Ya? Goalie? Seiychas?" I remember getting some bewildered looks from the kids, but I did not really think twice about it, and I went ahead and played goalie for the penalty kick, which missed the target anyway.

Later that evening, I was hanging out with my Russian friend, Max, who spoke fluent English and acted as our translator with the school where we were teaching. I do not remember how it came up, but at some point in our conversation, I asked Max if the word I pronounced as "goalie" had any meaning in Russian. Max laughed, and he informed me that голый (pronounced just like "goalie" in English) was the masculine form of the adjective meaning "naked." I had been asking those kids if they wanted me to be naked!

Fortunately, I did not get picked up by the "militsia" -- another false cognate meaning "police," not "militia" -- for questioning regarding my "offer" to be naked while playing soccer. Needless to say, I did learn a valuable lesson regarding false cognates, and I would like to pass that bit of knowledge on to you as well. Never assume that a word in Russian, or any other language, will be the same as its English equivalent without knowing for sure what you are about to say.