On 23 April, the English-speaking community, comprising over 2 billion people globally, celebrates UN English Language Day. This date was chosen to honour the cultural and linguistic diversity of the English language as it is both the birthday and date of death of one of the most famous playwrights and poets of all time, William Shakespeare.
He is undoubtedly one of the most oft-quoted and studied writers in the English language even though his plays were written nearly 500 years ago. Although there is a widespread belief that Shakespeare’s ‘Elizabethan English’ is completely different from Modern English, in fact, only 5% of the words used by Shakespeare are different from those found in modern dictionaries. One reason why readers may find his works difficult to understand is that they are full of false friends from Early Modern English. These intralingual false friends refer to pairs of words that look and/or sound the same but have experienced a shift in meaning. They pose an obstacle for all English speakers, both native and non-native. For example, the meaning of the word awful has completely changed from the Shakespearean meaning of awe-inspiring to the modern meaning of exceedingly bad/terrible.
Of course, as interpreters you are more often faced with interlingual false friends. So, if you want to get more practice at avoiding them, we invite you to take a look at our English language section where you will find all kinds of practice speeches, which will certainly include potential false friends. As Shakespeare wrote in Henry V: “[…] good luck go with thee!”.