10 German words that look English: true friends or false friends?
Coffee Break German
Radio Lingua Network
4.7 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you ready for a test? In this episode, Thomas presents 10 German words that look just like English words and challenges you to decide whether they share the same meaning or not. You'll pick up some new vocabulary and learn to avoid some surprisingly common misunderstandings.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ayn Wondershounen good day and hello by Coffee Break German. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm it again, Thomas. |
| 0:08.0 | And today have a quick quiz for you. |
| 0:12.0 | We are talking about words today that look very similar in both English and in German. |
| 0:19.0 | Sometimes they also have very similar meanings. Let's call these words true friends. |
| 0:24.8 | But sometimes the meaning is completely different, also better known as a false friend. |
| 0:32.9 | Your challenge is to decide what category each of the 10 German words falls into. Is it a true |
| 0:40.3 | friend or is it a false friend? I will see each word twice and then give you some time to |
| 0:46.9 | think about it before revealing the English meaning. And just in case you think you will already |
| 0:52.6 | know most of these words, |
| 0:55.9 | ah, don't be too sure. |
| 1:01.3 | I specifically picked some more interesting and maybe also some advanced ones instead of using derog or Das Gift. |
| 1:05.9 | So, let's get's with our True Friends, False Friends quiz. |
| 1:20.2 | Let's start with our first word, ideal. |
| 1:21.7 | Ideal. |
| 1:23.7 | True friend or false friend. |
| 1:24.6 | What do you think? |
| 1:27.1 | Nice. It's spelled the same same but it's pronounced really differently. |
| 1:31.3 | Ideal means the same thing in German and English. |
| 1:35.3 | And that is that something is perfect or it's just right for a very specific purpose. |
| 1:40.3 | Here an example. |
| 1:42.3 | That is the ideal solution for our problem. |
... |
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