False friendIn linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English embarrassed and Spanish embarazada 'pregnant'; English parents versus Portuguese parentes and Italian parenti (both meaning 'relatives'); English demand and French demander 'ask'; and English gift, German Gift 'poison', and Norwegian gift 'married'.
Portuguese languagePortuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "Lusophone" (lusófono).
Romance languagesThe Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are numerous modern languages that evolved from Late Latin and its spoken form, often called Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages branch of the Indo-European language family. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish (489 million), Portuguese (283 million), French (80 million), Italian (67 million) and Romanian (24 million), which are all national languages of their respective countries of origin.
Basque languageBasque ('bæsk,_'bɑːsk) (euskara eus̺ˈkaɾa) is a language spoken by Basques and others of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of northern Spain and southwestern France. Linguistically, Basque is a language isolate (unrelated to any other existing languages). The Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, the Basque Country. The Basque language is spoken by 28.4% (751,500) of Basques in all territories. Of these, 93.
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family. It originated in early medieval England and, today, is the most spoken language in the world and the third most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers.
OrthographyAn orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word boundaries, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and most of these systems have undergone substantial standardization, thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language. These processes can fossilize pronunciation patterns that are no longer routinely observed in speech (e.g.
Aragonese languageAragonese (ˌærəɡəˈniːz ; aragonés aɾaɣoˈnes in Aragonese) is a Romance language spoken in several dialects by about 12,000 people as of 2011, in the Pyrenees valleys of Aragon, Spain, primarily in the comarcas of Somontano de Barbastro, Jacetania, Alto Gállego, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorza/Ribagorça. It is the only modern language which survived from medieval Navarro-Aragonese in a form distinctly different from Spanish. Historically, people referred to the language as fabla ('talk' or 'speech').
Catalan languageCatalan (ˈkætələn,_-æn,_ˌkætəˈlæn; autonym: català, kətəˈla), known in the Valencian Community and Carche as Valencian (autonym: valencià), is a Western Romance language. It is the official language of Andorra, and an official language of two autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. It is also an official language in Valencia, where it is called Valencian.
Hungarian languageHungarian () is a Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries that used to belong to it. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungarian communities in southern Slovakia, western Ukraine (Subcarpathia), central and western Romania (Transylvania), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), northern Croatia, northeastern Slovenia (Prekmurje), and eastern Austria.
Romanian languageRomanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: limba română ˈlimba roˈmɨnə, or românește, in Romanian) is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. As a minority language it is spoken by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania (Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine), and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 28–29 million people as an L1+L2 language, of whom 24 million are native speakers. In Europe, Romanian occupies the 10th position among 37 official languages.
