Importance ★★
Discussion
English and Swedish are both Germanic languages and share a common origin. Moreover, Old Norse (the language out of which Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic evolved) had a significant influence on the development of English through colonization. Consequently, it is not surprising that the two languages share some vocabulary. Many words in English and Swedish are similar. The following pairs of everyday words clearly indicate a common ancestry:
| English | Swedish |
|---|---|
| brother | broder |
| can | kan |
| cat | katt |
However, sometimes appearances can be deceiving, and we should not automatically assume that English words that resemble Swedish words have the same meaning. Because of cultural developments and chance, meaning may shift over the centuries following the migration of a word. Words which are very similar in sound and/or appearance in two separate languages but nevertheless have different meanings can be very confusing. We call such words false friends:
| Swedish | English | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Aktuell | Current | Actual means real in English. |
| Eventuell | Possible | Eventual means subsequent or final in English. |
| Konsekvent | Consistent | In English, consequent means that something happens as the result of something else. |
It may also be the case that one language has only one word for distinct qualities, concepts or other phenomena, while another langauge names them separately. Here are a few examples in which a Swedish word translates to two different English words:
| Swedish | English |
|---|---|
| Effektiv | Swedish uses one word to describe what English refers to as effective (achieving a goal) and efficient (achieving a goal using little money or effort). |
| Gymnasium | In Swedish, gymnasium refers to a level of education but in English a gymnasium is a facility for sports. When referring to the corresponding educational level, American English uses high school; in the UK it is called upper secondary school. |
| Hus | In English, house refers to a home, whereas building refers to a physical structure that may be domestic or not. |
| Isolering | Swedish uses one word to refer to isolation (solitude) and insulation (material used to keep heat from escaping). |
| Mena | This Swedish verb can correspond either to mean (as in What do you mean?) or to argue (as in She argues that global warming is a fiction). |
| Mening | In Swedish, one word refers to (semantic or existential) meaning and (the linguistic category) sentence. |
| Säkerhet | English makes a distinction between safety (protection from harm) and security (protection from attack, invasion, or loss). |
Similarly, here are some examples of English words that translate in non-obvious ways to Swedish:
| English | Swedish |
|---|---|
| Ambitious | The Swedish word ambitiös is less complex and more positive than the English ambitious, which may also imply ruthlessness or undue optimism. |
| Aspect | Swedes overuse aspect in the belief that it is the equivalent of Swedish aspekt (which can mean something like consideration); in fact, aspect in English refers to a feature (of something specific), or can mean appearance or direction. It can also refer to a grammatical category. |
| Branch | In Swedish, bransch refers to a business or an industry, whereas English branch refers to a part of an organization. |
| Merit | Swedes often translate meriter to merits (which means advantages or qualities and corresponds to the Swedsih word förtjänster), whereas they actually mean qualifications. |
| Perverse | In Swedish, pervers means perverted, which is why Swedes may be shocked to hear English speakers call their children perverse; this word is more multi-faceted in English. |
Summary
“False friends” are words in two languages that appear to be the same but in fact have different meanings.
Further Discussion
Similar misunderstandings can also occur between users of different varieties of the same language, such as American and British English, since the same word may mean different things in different varities:
| American English | British English | |
|---|---|---|
| pants | trousers | underwear |
| fag | gay man (very offensive) | cigarette |
| mate | sexual partner (in animals) | friend |
| pavement | road surface | sidewalk |