English and German have a lot of words in common, both being part of the Germanic languages, for example house = Haus, in = in, hay = Heu, often = oft,  interesting = interessant etc. This is a very helpful thing, because who studies German and has some English knowledge gets a nice amount of meanings for free. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Let’s have a closer look to some examples:

,1. to become ≠ bekommen

to become = werden, bekommen = to get/to receive

z.B. Er wurde sehr berühmt. (He became very famous).

Ich habe einen Brief bekommen. (He got a letter.)

‘werden’ leads us to the next problem:

the second usage of werden = will (future tense)

Nächstes Jahr werden wir nach Australien fahren. (We will go to Australia next year.)

2. will (Engl.) ≠ will (Germ.)

The German ‘will’ comes from the modal verb ‘wollen’ and has the meaning ‘to want to’,  but in a very strong way, for example, kids going to a shop would often say: Ich will this and that. Their mum wouldn’t be so happy about their way of expressing themselves, and she might correct them saying: Du möchtest … – the more polite version of ‘to want to’.

3. so (Engl.) ≠ so (Germ.)

At least in most of the cases, so (Germ.) means ‘in that way’. When used in this meaning, the English and the German ‘so’ can be quite similar:

so big = so groß

But to say: We had this problem. So, we decided to … ‘deshalb’ would be a good option, but  also a relative clause with ‘weshalb’ (they have exactly the same meaning, just different grammar: ‘deshalb’ requires a main sentence, while ‘weshalb’ needs a secondary clause.)

Wir hatten dieses Problem. Deshalb haben wir entschieden …

Wir hatten dieses Problem, weshalb wir entschieden haben …

4. also (Engl.) ≠ also (Germ.)

The English ‘also’ is ‘auch’ in German, and the German ‘also’ in English often should be translated as ‘well, …’. It does not mean ‘so’, because … see No.3

5: A funny couple, not really false friends

Since ‘aus’ often has the meaning of out and ‘ein’ the meaning of in, why ‘to sleep in’ is translated as ‘ausschlafen’ and not ‘einschlafen’? Because ‘einschlafen’ means ‘to fall asleep’. Where is the relationship? Or the other way round: Why ‘ausschlafen’ is not translated as ‘sleep out’? Of course, because it also has another meaning: a kind of detached house in the back of a house  or in a garden.

6. Emigrated and immigrated words

Now, there are even books about emigration of words, which doesn’t seem to me such a particular thing. For many reason, people moving between different cultures and languages, the lack of a word in one language which will be borrowed from another one etc., we find words moving around the world. But how does it come that a word ends up in another language with a completely different meaning? A ‘Handy‘ in German is a mobile, obviously the meaning has something to do with its characteristic being handy, in fact, already in the forties, the walkie-talkie had a smaller brother, the handy-talkie, and from there starts a long story how the mobile in Germany became a Handy. The pronunciation is apparently American, and it is a false friend used by Germans speaking English. Of course, who is proud of his own English proficiency would never use it. Strange enough that the word seems to have found its way back into American slang. Some people making fun of the Swabian’s accent say, it comes from their: ‘Hän di koi Schnur?’ (Haben die keine Schnur? They don’t have any cable?)

Then the Smoking (dinner jacket or tux), which is derived from the smoking jacket, once used for the male part of a dinner party, when the official part of the evening was finished and the men withdrew in order to smoke.

The other way round the German word ‘Blitz‘ ended up in English with a completely different meaning. In German, it means lightning, while the English word comes from an abbreviation of ‘Blitzkrieg’.  Funny enough that in Italian ‘blitz’ has yet another meaning: raid, which is translated back into German as ‘Razzia’, an Italian word. The world is small, also the world of the words.