Having been out of school for so long since undergrad, sometimes it's hard to stay motivated in a graduate program, so I thought I would start this blog as a little side project in order to remind myself of why I study languages, and to share the beauty I find in them with others. Feel free to share your own insights and inspirations, and links to other linguistically nerdy blogs or interesting articles.
I thought I would start with a "false friend" ("falso amigo" in Spanish, and in Arabic, صديق زائف).
false friend
noun
a word or expression that has a similar form to one in a person's native language, but a different meaning (for example English magazine and French magasin ‘shop’).
ORIGIN translating French faux ami .
Today's false friend is avatar, and nope, I'm not talkin' about the movie.
avatar
m. Vicisitud, cambio. Más en pl.:
los avatares de la vida.
Translation: vicissitude, change
Example: the changes / ups and downs of life
avatar |ˈavətɑː|
noun
1 chiefly Hinduism a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher.
• an incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person or idea: he chose John Stuart Mill as the avatar of the liberal view.
2 an icon or figure representing a particular person in a computer game, Internet forum, etc. conversation is depicted in a balloon over the avatar's head.
It turns out that when you look up the Spanish to English translation on WordReference.com, you get the English meaning of "representación gráfica" (graphic representation, like on a computer) or "encarnación de una deidad" (incarnation of a deity, such as in Hinduism).
However, when you look up the pure definition in Spanish, you only find "the vicissitudes of life."
Hmm...I wonder the path that avatar took to develop a different meaning en español...
