So, get your imagination going and try to work out which false friend caused confusion in this situation:

Our guess is that the customer is a German lady in an English restaurant who didn’t get her order right. Even though English and German have a lot in common, often the similarity of words can be misleading. For example the German word “bekommen” resembles strongly the English word “become” but actually means something slightly different…

So let’s assume this German lady said: “I would like to become a steak, please” – would you not look as bewildered as the waiter? This is a classic example of a German false friend in English.

But what exactly are false friends and why do they occur?

False friends, or faux amis in French, are words that sound similar but have different meanings. Sticking to our example, you will have guessed already that the German word “bekommen” doesn’t actually translate as “to become” but as “to get”. Since German and English are both Germanic languages, both verbs derive from the Proto-Germanic word “bikweman” which means “to get something”. In Old English it changed its meaning, while in German it stayed the same. So even though these two words have the same linguistic historical origin, “become” and “bekommen” are no longer interchangeable.

Let’s have a look at another example: Imagine an English woman is going out with a Spanish man. One day the English woman spills her coffee all over her Spanish boyfriend. When she tells her boyfriend “Estoy embarazada”, she might think she is telling him that she is embarrassed, but on seeing the look of shock on his face she realises she has said something completely different! No, she has not told him that she feels ashamed of what she has done, she has actually told him that she is pregnant!

To help you avoid this kind of problem we have selected a few typical false friends that could cause you trouble:

English –> German

Spanish –> English

Portuguese –> English

In the end, being tricked by a false friend might turn into a funny anecdote you end up laughing about. Tell us your own anecdote about “making false friends” and help us extend our list!

Japanese is the mother tongue of over 130 million people and the 10th most spoken language in the world.

It’s easy to learn too (it doesn’t use genders, articles or plurals)! To make it even easier, we offer our content in the Latin alphabet in addition to the Japanese script. As usual, you can listen to the pronunciation of the vocabulary words. Premium Members also have access to the audio of our key phrases and dialogues. This, in combination with the Latin transcription, will sharpen your understanding of the Japanese pronunciation.

When starting to learn Japanese, it’s best to start with Hiragana, which is a basic Japanese alphabet that represents a specific sound. Each sound does not have any meaning by itself. On busuu.com we teach Hiragana to introduce you to the Japanese language. Learning Hiragana alongside with the Latin transcription, you will be able to have a perfect conversation in Japanese.

So learn over 3,000 Japanese words and key phrases on busuu.com and try out what you’ve learnt with our growing community of native speakers.
Start learning Japanese now!

It’s really easy to start learning Japanese:
1. Go to ‘Add a new language‘ in your course menu.
2. Add ‘Japanese‘ to the languages you learn.
3. Click on the new Japanese tree in your garden to start learning.

Premium Members have all the usual benefits, such as PDFs, podcasts, voice recording exercises and much more. Not a Premium Member yet? Use our 15% new year discount to upgrade to Premium now!

And if you’re a native Japanese speaker, you can now use busuu.com in Kanji! Just go to your settings page to change the interface language to Japanese.

Short explanation for non-natives:
The modern Japanese script is called Kanji, it’s a logographic form of writing, meaning that it does not use letters but symbols that represent ideas and concepts. Each Kanji has a specific meaning.

We’re excited to start 2012 with the launch of Japanese. That means we now offer 11 languages in total! Are you as excited as us? Start learning now and upgrade to Premium with our 15% new year discount to learn even faster!

Premium Member

There are two ways to access the videos:

1. The Live Units are included in your Intermediate level courses, usually appearing every 4 or 5 units, and you will recognise them by the TV icon . This can be found in your home area, but also in your language area, where you see the unit you are currently working on. To navigate through the level, just click on the arrows on the left and right. Click on the “Start” button to begin the unit.

2. If after this you are eager to do more Live Units, you can access them any time via your Resources menu, both in your home area and your language area. This way, you can access the video overview directly and choose the one you find most interesting:

Write a short comment about the video and send it to our community’s native speakers who will then correct your comment. Of course, you will be rewarded with busuu-berries for your efforts!

The video-based learning tool is designed to strengthen your listening comprehension and to provide you with interesting material on a wide range of topics like nature, animals, travelling, etc. With our improved list of themes, you can be sure to find a video that will catch your eye. They are updated automatically, so you can enjoy topical learning material every day!

Not a Premium Member yet? Take advantage of our New Year 15% discount and upgrade your account now! Enjoy our Premium Functions and improve your listening, reading and writing comprehension with our improved Live Units.

We have some more exciting news on the way so stay tuned!

  Premium member

Synchronise the app with your online profile to earn busuu-berries and reach your Mybusuu goal, wherever you might be. The app includes over 3,000 words and key phrases with pictures and recordings to help you pronounce and memorise them. Learn languages easily with our vocabulary and dialogue exercises and test yourself with our interactive review at the end of each unit.

In addition to this, the iOS update automatically activates our Travel Course on your app! This course will help you learn essential words and expressions you need to know when travelling abroad. Download your app now!

Our apps have already been downloaded a total of over 6 million times. Don’t miss out on this perfect add-on for language learning and get your own app to learn languages on the go!

Not yet a Premium Member? Use our New Year’s 15% discount to upgrade your account and access all our Premium Functions, including the premium content of our apps. Until 31 January 2011, you can become a Premium Member from only 4,24€ per month!

This free app is available in the following languages:

But before rushing into this new year, let’s have a quick look back at an eventful and successful 2011 with busuu.com:

January

• We started our Blog series on endangered languages to raise awareness about nearly extinct languages. Every couple of months we introduce you to another endangered language.

February

• We entered a strategic partnership with The Guardian and the Macmillan Dictionary to offer you fresh learning content daily. English learners can read and comment on Guardian articles and look up words in the integrated Macmillan Dictionary.

March

• We launched a voice recording exercise! With this function, you can record your own voice and send it to native speakers to get feedback on your pronunciation.
• In collaboration with IE Business School we presented the busuu.com Language Barometer, the largest worldwide online survey about the future of language learning. See the results here!

April

• We included new features in our popular iPhone app and made it also available for iPad to enhance your mobile learning experience!
• Having been a huge success in 2010, we repeated our big Easter Egg Hunt to find the golden egg! Among the successful hunters we did a raffle for 10 Premium Memberships!
• Martin Varsavsky, a great fan of busuu.com and well respected entrepreneur, supported us with his investment to continue our successful journey in the online world of language learning.

May

• We added Polish and Turkish to our existing language courses and thus made our community available to Polish and Turikish users. Once again: Witam and Hoşgeldiniz!
• We celebrated our 3rd Birthday! Thanks to all of you for the many good wishes :)

June

• We launched a Travel App with integrated Survival Guide for iPhone and iPad! We hope you enjoyed your holidays!
• ‘Stiftung Warentest’, a very renowned German foundation on product testing, awarded our mobile apps as the best mobile vocabulary trainer.

July

• Another milestone: We passed 3,000,000 users on busuu.com!
• It wasn’t only our community on busuu.com which was growing constantly this year, we also reached more than 100,000 fans on Facebook!

August

• Every language learner should have a great dictionary and that’s why we packed all our busuu.com Vocabulary content into the busuu.com dictionary
• After the huge success of our iPhone Apps, we launched the apps for Android devices too, such as HTC, Samsung, Motorola etc.!

September

• We took our courses to the next level, creating further content, including a new course for Business English.
• We released new Grammar Guides and strengthened our partnership with PONS to provide you with detailed explanations directly linked to our grammar units.

October

• The Business Course became available for Spanish ¡Olé!

November

• We launched a new design to make your language learning experience even more intuitive and fun.
• We reached over 5 million users online and 5 million users via our mobile apps! That’s 10 million in total and we are still growing!
• busuu.com won the category ‘Best Education, Recruitment, Media StartUp’ at The Europas, the annual European Tech Startup Awards.

December

• With Arabic we added the fourth most spoken language of the world to our list and now offer 10 languages in total!

As you can see 2011 was a very successful and exciting year for us and hopefully also for you! Thank you again for all of the support and feedback you gave us during the year. What makes busuu.com special is our interactive community. Without you, we would not have reached all these milestones in 2011!

Stay tuned in 2012! We will surprise you with new exciting features pretty soon!

Remember that during the month of January we are offering you a 15% discount on our Premium Membership!