Russian False Friends: How to Learn 76 Flashcards Without Falling for the Traps

Russian borrowed thousands of words from French, German and English, and many of them look like English while meaning something else. Russian False Friends (deck code FU3421) collects 76 of these words, each card showing the Cyrillic word with its transliteration, the real meaning, and the Russian word for the English sense you probably expected.

The traps that cause real misunderstandings

You'll also meet: актуальный, анекдот, бланк, дата vs данные, деликатный, кабинет, конкурс, люстра, матч vs спичка, оккупация, персонал vs личный, претензия, проспект, спектакль, фабрика vs ткань, фонд, шеф, танк vs бак, реализовать (also to sell), рецепт (recipe or prescription), камера (also a prison cell), процесс (also a trial), халат, абонемент and авангард.

Sort the deck into three piles

Not all 76 cards are traps, and drilling them all the same way wastes reviews.

1. Real false friends (about 45 cards). These are the cards in the table above: the meaning flips. Quiz them in both directions. The useful card is the reverse one: front accurate, back точный (not аккуратный). That's the one that saves you in conversation.
2. Partial friends (about 15 cards). Words like камера, рецепт, процесс, бокс, павильон, планшет and элемент keep the English meaning but add a second one. Learn the extra sense with a sentence: Он в камере — he's in a cell.
3. Safe cognates (about 15 cards). лаборатория, прогресс, стадион, хобби, юмор, архив, фарс, шоу, экзамен, эксперт, ресторан, транспорт and ярмарка (from German Jahrmarkt) mean what they look like. Tag them safe and review them less often. Their real difficulty is stress, so mark it on the card: лаборато́рия, педа́ль, таба́к.

Two clean-ups

• Cards comparing to French, not English. манеж (manège), эстрада (estrade) and абонемент (abonnement) contrast Russian with French words most English speakers don't use. Rewrite the backs against the English sense: абонемент = season ticket, subscription. It's a trap for English speakers because subscription to a newspaper is подписка.
• Vague backs. Cards like гений (more commonly used), эксперт (used more formally) and экзамен (formal test only) carry no real contrast. Turn them into safe cognates or delete them.

A false friend often surfaces inside a verb phrase (реализовать товар, to sell goods). Once the nouns stick, move on to our guide to Russian verb aspect and conjugation.

Search FU3421 in the library on Flip It to start the deck.