French False Friends List for English Speakers

When I started learning French, unfamiliar words were not always the problem. A completely new word made me stop and look it up. A familiar-looking word was more dangerous because I thought I already understood it.

Those words are usually called false friends, or faux amis. They resemble a word in another language but carry a different meaning. English and French have centuries of shared vocabulary, so the resemblance can feel unusually convincing.

A short French false friends list shows the pattern:

• actuellement means “currently,” not “actually.”
• une librairie is a bookshop, not a library. A library is une bibliothèque.
• attendre means “to wait,” not “to attend.”
• assister à means “to attend” or “to be present at,” although the transitive verb can also mean “to help.”
• sensible usually means “sensitive,” not “sensible.”

These are not obscure curiosities. They turn up in shops, conversations, news articles and ordinary plans. If someone says j’attends le bus, they are waiting for the bus. If a shop sign says librairie, it sells books. The mistake often survives because the wrong English meaning still produces a sentence that appears plausible for a moment.

Why a list is only the beginning

Reading a list helps you notice the trap, but recognition is different from recall. In conversation there is no time to scan a table. The useful habit is to see the French word, interrupt the automatic English guess, and retrieve the real meaning quickly.

Example sentences matter for the same reason. A bare translation can make a correction feel arbitrary. A sentence shows the word doing its normal job. Seeing actuellement beside a present-tense situation or librairie beside buying a book gives the correct meaning somewhere to settle. The next time the word appears, you have more than a definition to retrieve.

That is the narrow problem I built False Friends to practise. Each multiple-choice question starts with a word card. After you answer, the app shows the real meaning, the meaning people are tempted to assume, and example sentences with translations. You can also hear the word pronounced using speech on your iPhone.

The French pair works in both directions. French to English trains recognition while reading or listening. English to French asks you to retrieve the French word instead. Prompts, answers and explanations follow the direction you choose.

Difficulty tiers keep the first sessions manageable. Common words come first, followed by medium and advanced traps. A separate Partial tier covers words where the meanings overlap only sometimes. Those are worth treating carefully: they are not simply right or wrong, and context matters.

The word data is bundled in the app, so quizzes work offline. Progress, accuracy, session history and a daily streak remain visible, with optional practice reminders. There is no account, tracking or analytics. Progress can sync privately between your devices through iCloud.

False Friends is a one-time purchase. You pay once and keep it. There is no subscription, no in-app purchase and no trial that later turns into a bill.