• Elvith Ma'for
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    2 days ago

    Another example of a false friend:

    German: Bekommen (to get), English: Become (werden)

    Hence a joke I often heard while learning English:

    Guest: “I become a steak.”

    Waiter: “Well, I do hope you won’t, but I could ask the chef, if you insist…”

    • @[email protected]
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      2 days ago

      Whilst quite a lot of words are pretty much the same in both languages, “wie” in Dutch means “who” whilst in German it means “how”.

      Having learned Dutch first, I can tell you that when I was first learning German the expression “Wie geht’s” tended to give me a serious mental hiccup when I was trying to talk to German people.