Linguistic false friends

Cognates: words that sound similar in different languages often turn out to be ‘false friends’. I found quite a number of examples in a book I was editing. Overall the book was fairly well structured and written. Yet, you could tell which chapters were written by non-English mother tongue speakers,  not so much by the style but by those ‘false friends’.

Here are some of them:

“Countries disposing of natural resources”, which I changed to “Countries with natural resources at their disposal”. The French disposant de was translated as disposing of‘instead of at their disposal or (depending on the content) with.

“… byzantine arcanes of financial markets”. Arcanes is a adjective in English, not a noun so I changed it to byzantine mysteries.

“pretending that the US financial system was the standard for the world”. Changed pretending to claiming (incorrect translation of prétendre).

However, it is true that English is a very versatile language!

My favourite (to date) of a “new” English idiom is this:
“… begs the pregnant question.”  A wonderful mix of pregnant pause and begs the question.