Learn about some Persian-English false friends
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| Michael: What are some Persian-English false friends? |
| Negar: And what are some words that are often used incorrectly? |
| Michael: At PersianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Consider the following situation: Paria Parvizi and Karen Lee are shopping together. Karen points at a jacket and says, |
| "I want to buy this sweater." |
| Karen Lee: من می خوام این ژاکت رو بخرم. (man mikhaam in zhaakat ro bekharam.) |
| Dialogue |
| Karen Lee: من میخوام این ژاکت رو بخرم. (man mikhaam in zhaakat ro bekharam.) |
| Paria Parvizi: این ژاکت نیست... (in zhaakat nist...) |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Karen Lee: من میخوام این ژاکت رو بخرم. (man mikhaam in zhaakat ro bekharam.) |
| Michael: "I want to buy this sweater." |
| Paria Parvizi: این ژاکت نیست… (in zhaakat nist...) |
| Michael: "This isn't a sweater..." |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Michael: In this conversation, we hear |
| Negar: کارن لی (kaaren li) |
| Michael: say, |
| Negar: من میخوام این ژاکت رو بخرم. (man mikhaam in zhaakat ro bekharam.) |
| Michael: In English, this means, "I want to buy this sweater." Paria's response is |
| Negar: این ژاکت نیست... (in zhaakat nist...) |
| Michael: This means, "This isn't a sweater..." |
| Michael: In this lesson, we'll talk about false friends between Persian and English. |
| Michael: The term false friends, |
| Negar: مترادفنما (moteraadef-namaa), |
| Michael: also known as false cognates, is an informal term in linguistics used to describe a pair of words between two different languages that seem to be identical but convey two different meanings. To understand false cognates between Persian and English, it's important to first understand what true cognates are and how they show up between languages. Cognates are words that sound similar between two languages, and, in fact, have similar or identical origins. Between English and Persian, there are many of these. |
| Michael: We can think of the word "door" for example, in English, which is |
| Negar: در (dar) |
| Michael: in Persian. The word "bad" in English is identical in Persian: |
| Negar: بد (bad) |
| While there are many cognates between Persian and English, it's important to keep false friends in mind too so that you don't commit any easy-to-make translation mistakes as new Persian language learners. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Michael: Let's take a closer look at the dialogue. |
| Do you remember how Karen Lee says "I want to buy this sweater" while pointing at a jacket? |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Negar as Karen Lee: من میخوام این ژاکت رو بخرم. (man mikhaam in zhaakat ro bekharam.) |
| Michael: Here, |
| Negar: ژاکت (zhaakat) |
| Michael: and "jacket" are false friends since actually the Persian word |
| ٔNegar: ژاکت (zhaakat) [SLOW] ژاکت (zhaakat) |
| Michael: means "sweater" and not "jacket." They look very similar in both languages, and you might be tempted to believe that the meaning is the same when encountering the word |
| Negar: ژاکت (zhaakat) |
| Michael: in Persian. |
| This is the problem false friends often cause when learning a foreign language. |
| Immediately afterwards in this conversation, we hear Paria Parvizi confused about what Karen Lee said, and correcting her by saying |
| Negar: این ژاکت نیست... (in zhaakat nist...) |
| Michael: "This isn't a sweater..." since Karen pointed at a jacket she wanted to buy. |
| [Summary] |
| In this lesson, you've learned that hearing a familiar word in Persian doesn't mean that you will understand the meaning of it, due to the phenomenon of the so-called "false friends"—words that may be written or sound the same way as their English counterparts, but have a completely different meaning. |
| Now, let's look at some examples. Our first example is |
| Negar: من (man) [SLOW] من (man) |
| Michael: which is not a cognate to the English word "man," but instead means "I," as in the subject pronoun in Persian. |
| Negar: نو (no) [SLOW] نو (no) |
| Michael: is also a false cognate. In Persian, it translates to the word for "new." Our next false friend is the word |
| Negar: کت (kat) [SLOW] کت (kat) |
| Michael: In Persian, it refers to a person's shoulder or shoulder blade. Some other examples are |
| Negar: سد (sad) |
| Michael: which doesn't mean "sad" as we might assume based on its similarity to its English counterpart. Instead, |
| Negar:[SLOW] سد (sad) |
| Michael: in Persian means "dam." Please note that the pronunciation of this word is exactly the same as the number "one hundred" in Persian |
| Negar: صد (sad) [SLOW] صد (sad) |
| Michael: but they have different spellings. Next, we have |
| Negar: کال (kaal) [SLOW] کال (kaal) |
| Michael: which is similar to the English word "call," but the meaning is totally different from that. In fact, in Persian, it means "unripe" |
| Negar: ران (raan) [SLOW] ران (raan) |
| Michael: which doesn't mean "run." Instead, this word means "thigh" in Persian. |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion |
| Michael: Sometimes, the communication between two Persian speakers might even get difficult because of false friends existing between dialects of the same language. You might have noticed already that, even in English, words like "jacket" or "sweater" may have a different meaning in Britain or the States. The same thing applies to Persian. If two people from different parts of Iran talk to each other, due to different dialects, some words may be misunderstood. Let's have a look at some examples. If someone from Mashhad in the northeastern part of Iran goes to a confectionery store in Tehran and asks for some Profiteroles, perhaps the seller will call the police immediately since, in the Mashhadi dialect, the word for Profiteroles is |
| Negar: نارنجک (naarenjak) |
| Michael: and, in most parts of Iran, |
| Negar: [SLOW] نارنجک (naarenjak), |
| Michael: means "grenade," so it would be a dangerous misunderstanding. Another example for these words is |
| Negar: سرپایی (sarpaayi) |
| Michael: which refers to "slippers" in Kerman, a city in the center of Iran, but, for the majority of Persian natives, the word |
| Negar: [SLOW] سرپایی (sarpaayi) |
| Michael: means "outpatient" |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Negar: خداحافظ (khodaahaafez) |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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