Member-only story
Five False Friends in Spanish That Are Tough to Spot
Because they’re only slightly and/or sometimes false
You know where you are with a properly dependable false friend. You know deep down that Gollum’s going to lead you into Shelob’s lair, or Loki will betray dumb old muscle-bound Thor. But sometimes a false friend remains perfectly true right till the end of the story, only to let you down in the sequel. Here are a few examples of Spanish words that can do just that for unwary English-speakers.
Importante
Which does normally mean ‘important’, as expected. But can also subtly shapeshift to mean something more like ‘substantial’, ‘major’ or ‘weighty’. Un cambio importante might indeed be important, but would often better be translated as ‘a major/significant/substantial change’.
The verb importar has a more clearly split pair of meanings, as either ‘matter’, ‘be important’, or otherwise ‘import (goods, files)’.
Controlar
‘To exert control over’. That is all the (admittedly useless) dictionary of the Real (royal, rather than real, in this case) Academia Española allows for controlar as a transitive verb. But very often it is actually used in the sense of ‘keep a close eye on’.
