DOI: 10.47743/jss-2025-71-2-3

Abstract: Our paper focuses on the topic of false friends approached in a teaching context. False friends have been frequently examined from various perspectives, such as translation studies, lexicology, and semantics. In addition, the phrase “false friends” may be found in various languages. There are many compendiums and specialized dictionaries dealing with false friends; nevertheless, this concept does not have a clear and conclusive definition. Broadly speaking, false friends are understood as doublets having an identical or similar form, but different meanings. In fact, such concepts are called “false friends” according to the frequency of errors and confusions that they generate. In other words, false friends are linguistic “traps”, especially for language learners. Based on our teaching experience, we propose a typology of false friends (“intralinguistic” and “interlinguistic” false friends, respectively) and we discuss some comprehension and translation difficulties encountered by Romanian learners of legal French.

Keywords: false friends, didactics, semantic error, semantic confusion, legal French.

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