You’ll definitely encounter false friends when you start to learn French vocabulary.

These tricky words look or sound exactly like English words but mean something entirely different.

Using the wrong word can completely change your sentence and cause major confusion.

French speakers call these words faux amis.

Memorizing them early on saves you from embarrassing language mistakes.

I’ll show you exactly which words to watch out for.

Understanding French false friends

English and French share a long history of exchanging vocabulary.

Because of this shared history, thousands of words in both languages look identical and mean the same thing.

However, many words evolved differently over the centuries.

This divergence created false friends.

A false friend is simply a word that tricks you into assuming its meaning based on your native language.

If you rely purely on guessing, you’ll eventually use a false friend in the wrong context.

The most common French false friends

You need to commit these general everyday words to memory right away.

Some of these words are responsible for the most common mistakes made by English speakers.

For example, asking for a préservatif in a grocery store when you want jam without chemicals will result in very strange looks.

It translates to a condom, while the English word “preservative” is actually conservateur in French.

Here’s a list of the most frequent false friends you’ll encounter.

If you want to say “actually” in French, you should use the phrase en fait.

If you need to say “money”, you should use the word l’argent.

Here are a few examples of these words used correctly in a sentence.

Food and cooking false friends

Ordering food in a restaurant or shopping at a French market requires care.

You might end up with a plate of plums when you really just wanted a prune.

Study these common food-related false friends before your next trip to France.

If you want to order French fries, you must ask for des frites.

If you want a dried grape (an English raisin), you should ask for un raisin sec.

Personality and emotion false friends

Describing how you feel or what a person is like is another tricky area for false friends.

Telling a French person that they’re formidable is actually a huge compliment.

In English, “formidable” usually implies something intimidating or difficult to overcome.

In French, it simply means wonderful or fantastic.

Here are the most important emotional false friends to know.

If you want to call someone sensible or practical, use the word raisonnable.

If you want to talk about a character in a movie or book, use the word personnage.

Keep a list of these tricky words handy whenever you study French vocabulary.