In our last lesson on false friends, we discussed a few false cognates that begin with the letters C and D. Today, we're moving yet another step down the alphabet to learn about some falsche Freunde starting with E and F:

eventuell: maybe, possibly, perhaps
False English friend: eventually, finally, ultimately, at some later time (German: endlich, schließlich)

Ich rieche dran [daran], ob die wirklich auch nach 'ner [einer] Erdbeere riecht, und eventuell könnte ich noch oben schauen.

I smell it, [to see] if it also really smells like a strawberry, and maybe I could look on top.

Captions 23-24, Kochhaus Berlin - Frische Zutaten erkennen
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die Fabrik: factory
False English friend: fabric, cloth (German: der Stoff, das Gewebe)

Bald waren sie bei einer Fabrik, bei einer Farbenfabrik.

Soon they were at a factory, at a paint factory.

Caption 6, Piggeldy und Frederick - Malen
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der Fotograf: photographer
False English friend: photograph, an image taken by a camera (German: das Foto)

Also so richtig so dunkelkammermäßig so, wie die Fotografen das früher gemacht haben.

Well, so really like a darkroom, like the photographers used to do it.

Caption 52, Lokalhelden - Art House
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Further Learning:

Try to find more words in German and English that sound similar but have different meanings. For a thorough list of German false friends, take a look at this extensive chart and then search Yabla videos to find the words used in context!

Topics Vocabulary