False Friends, or True..?

I was giving a course on negotiating in English this week in Madrid and one of my favourite false friends showed up to the session: the word ‘compromise‘. If you didn’t know, a false friend is a word which looks or sounds like a word in another language but has a different meaning. These words often come from the same original root, like my old favourite ‘compromise’. This word is important in negotiation as it refers to two or more parties changing their negotiating positions to reach an agreement. However, its false friend in Spanish: ‘compromiso’ means ‘commitment’ in English; a quite different concept! Click on the picture below to explore some of my other favourite English/Spanish false friends!

Ed Taylor (Head of Studies at King’s Training)