False Friends - and more - contributed by Joe Sinclair

False friends are words in different languages that appear to be related, but are not.  An example is the Spanish compromiso, which means "promise," not "compromise".   Lists of such words are provided in two appendices

Part VIII of Nurturing Potential's Language series considers the relevance of this phenomenon to foreign language students, and then continues in rather more light-hearted vein to discuss what Joe Sinclair calls friendly falsehoods - which are "illegitimate" words adopted from one language to another.

Further appendices give examples of how these devices have been used humorously in literature.