False Friends in English: 20 Words Taiwanese Learners Get Wrong | 英文假朋友完整指南

There’s a predictable pattern to the English mistakes Taiwanese learners make. A student who says “He borrowed me his car” or “That documentary was very boring me” isn’t randomly guessing — they’re applying Mandarin logic to English vocabulary, and it’s misfiring. Linguists call these clashes false friends (假朋友): the word feels right, the meaning seems close, but the English version behaves entirely differently.

This matters more for Mandarin speakers than for learners from many other language backgrounds. Chinese regularly uses one word where English uses two — and the two English words carry a distinction that Mandarin simply doesn’t encode. The result is that Taiwanese learners face vocabulary forks they didn’t know existed, and they pick wrong about half the time. The 20 pairs below are where this happens most often.

什麼是英文假朋友？ [What Are False Friends in English?]

The term “false friend” comes from linguistics, where it originally described words that look similar across two languages but mean something different — like the Spanish word embarazada (pregnant, not embarrassed). For Taiwanese learners of English, that visual-similarity problem doesn’t apply much, since the writing systems are completely different.

The Taiwan false-friend problem operates at the concept level instead. Mandarin uses 帶 (dài) for both bring et take. It uses 借 (jiè) for both borrow et lend. It uses 看 (kàn) for see, look, et watch. Every time this happens, an English learner reaches a fork they didn’t know was there — and with no L1 signal telling them which path to take, they guess. Understanding this pattern is what separates learners who plateau at intermediate from learners who keep building. For more on how English word choice works as a system, see this guide to English collocations — it covers the same kind of hidden pairings in a different format.

False friends live inside familiar vocabulary — the problem isn’t unknown words, it’s words that behave differently than expected.

Part 1 — 動詞方向假朋友 [Bring vs Take / Borrow vs Lend]

Mandarin 帶 and 借 each encode movement in one direction-neutral word. English splits both into direction-specific pairs, and the split carries real meaning.

Bring vs Take — The rule is spatial: bring moves something toward the listener or destination; take moves something away from the current location.

• ❌ “Can you bring your laptop to the office?” (if you’re currently at the office, asking someone at home)
• ✅ “Can you take your laptop to the office?” / “Can you bring your laptop when you come to the office?”

The fix: think about the listener’s location, not the speaker’s. Bring means “come here with it.” Take means “go there with it.”

Borrow vs Lend — 借 covers both sides of the same transaction. English marks which side you’re on:

• ❌ “Can you borrow me your pen?” (the borrower can’t borrow something à someone)
• ✅ “Can you lend me your pen?” / “Can I borrow your pen?”

The fix: borrow means you receive something temporarily. Lend means you give something temporarily.

Direction-based verb pairs like bring/take and borrow/lend are among the most persistent false-friend errors for Taiwanese learners.

Part 2 — 感官動詞假朋友 [See vs Look vs Watch / Listen vs Hear]

Chinese uses 看 (kàn) for three English verbs and 聽 (tīng) for two. The English distinctions encode whether perception is active or passive — a concept Mandarin marks through context rather than vocabulary.

See vs Look vs Watch

• See — passive, unintentional: “I saw an accident on the highway.” You didn’t choose to see it.
• Look (at) — active but momentary: “Look at this photo.” A directed glance, brief attention.
• Watch — active and sustained: “I watched the game for two hours.” Ongoing attention to something that moves or changes.

Taiwanese learners most often mix up see et watch: “I am seeing TV” is wrong — TV is moving content requiring sustained attention, so it’s “watching TV.” You see a movie (experienced it once); you watch a series (repeatedly, following along).

Listen vs Hear

• ❌ “I was listening a strange noise outside.”
• ✅ “I heard a strange noise outside.” (passive, unintentional)
• ✅ “I was listening to the podcast.” (active, intentional — note the preposition à)

The pattern matches the see/watch logic: hear et see are passive. Écouter et watch are active. Both listen et look also need a preposition: listen à, look à.

Active vs passive perception is a distinction Mandarin handles differently — it’s one of the most systematic false-friend patterns for Taiwanese speakers.

Part 3 — -ed/-ing 形容詞陷阱 [The Most Common Pattern Error]

This is the false friend English teachers in Taiwan correct the most — and it’s a pattern error, not a single word mistake. Chinese uses 無聊 (wúliáo) for both “bored” (the feeling) and “boring” (the quality that causes the feeling). English splits them every time.

The rule: –ing adjectives describe the source of the feeling. –ed adjectives describe how a person feels as a result.

The four pairs Taiwanese learners mix up most often:

• The movie was boring. (It produced boredom.) / I was bored during the movie. (I experienced boredom.)
• The explanation was confusing. / I was confused by the explanation.
• The news was surprising. / We were all surprised by the news.
• The project was passionnant. / She was excited about the project.

A fast self-check: if you can replace the adjective with “it made me feel ___,” use –ed. If it’s “it was ___ -producing,” use –ing. “The movie made me feel bored” → person = bored, movie = boring. Once you fix this pattern for one pair, it applies to all the others at the same time.

The -ed vs -ing adjective pair is a pattern error — fixing it once unlocks the correct form for dozens of similar adjectives.

Part 4 — 意義出乎意料的單字 [Words with Hidden Double Meanings]

Some English words carry two separate meanings that map to two different Chinese words — and Taiwanese learners sometimes apply the wrong meaning, or use the wrong sentence structure around them.

Say vs Tell — Both translate as 說, but they work differently in English. Tell requires a person as its first object; say takes a clause or quote.

• ❌ “She said me to come early.” (say cannot take a person as its first object)
• ✅ “She told me to come early.” (tell + person + infinitive)
• ✅ “She said that I should come early.” (say + clause)

Know vs Meet — Chinese 認識 covers both the moment of introduction and the ongoing state of knowing someone. English marks the difference:

• ❌ “Nice to know you.” (said when first introduced)
• ✅ “Nice to meet you.” (first introduction)
• ✅ “I’ve known her for five years.” (ongoing familiarity)

Miss — One English word, three Mandarin equivalents. 錯過 (miss a bus, miss a deadline), 思念/想念 (miss a person, miss home), 小姐 (the title Miss). Context usually clarifies, but the emotional sense — missing a person — tends to be underused by Taiwanese learners who default to 想你 / I think of you.

Words like “say” and “tell” look interchangeable from a Chinese perspective — but they follow different sentence structures in English.

Part 5 — 語法單字假朋友 [Grammar Word Pairs]

These four pairs don’t have a direct Chinese parallel — they’re English-internal false friends that look similar enough to cause errors regardless of L1 background, but Taiwanese learners encounter them frequently in writing.

Than vs Then — Than is used in comparisons; then marks time or sequence.

• ✅ “She scores higher than her classmates.” / “Finish the report, then send it.”

Affect vs Effect — Affect is a verb (to have an influence on); effect is usually a noun (the result of that influence).

• ✅ “Lack of sleep affects concentration.” / “Lack of sleep has a serious effect on concentration.”

Fewer vs Less — Use fewer with countable nouns, less with uncountable nouns.

• ✅ “Fewer students enrolled this term.” (students = countable) / “There is less time than we expected.” (time = uncountable)

It’s vs Its — It’s is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” Its is the possessive pronoun — no apostrophe, ever.

• ✅ “It’s been a productive week.” / “The company updated its pricing policy.”

Grammar-level pairs like affect/effect and fewer/less require attention to part of speech — something Mandarin rarely makes explicit in this way.

台灣人為什麼容易犯這些錯誤？ [Why Taiwanese Learners Make These Errors]

The underlying cause is structural: Mandarin is a context-heavy language that often leaves disambiguation to the situation rather than encoding it in the word itself. English is different — it builds distinctions directly into vocabulary, and those distinctions are mandatory, not optional.

A 2015 study published in the journal System found that L1 Chinese speakers at intermediate English proficiency made significantly more verb-selection errors than Spanish or German L1 learners at the same proficiency level, specifically on verb pairs where Chinese uses a single lexical item.¹ The bring/take and borrow/lend pairs were among the highest-error categories. This isn’t a question of effort — it’s a structural mismatch between the two languages, and seeing it clearly is the first step to fixing it.

The good news: once you see the underlying pattern, it applies across multiple pairs at once. The active/passive distinction (see/watch, hear/listen) follows exactly the same logic as the -ed/-ing adjective pair. Fix one set and you’ve laid the groundwork for fixing several others. For a look at how English builds meaning systematically, the core vocabulary guide on this site shows the same principle applied to foundational words.

Structural differences between Mandarin and English — not lack of study — drive most false-friend errors for Taiwanese learners.

三種有效的改正方法 [Three Ways to Fix False Friend Errors]

1. Learn the distinction, not just the definition. When you look up a word, find the English word it’s most often confused with and study both at the same time. Borrow only makes complete sense once you’ve also studied lend. Most dictionaries give the Chinese translation — what they don’t give you is the English contrast, which is the thing that matters.

2. Use native speaker corpora, not just translations. Le Sketch Engine corpus tool and Merriam-Webster’s example sentences both show how words actually appear in published English. Seeing twenty real sentences with bring and twenty with take makes the directional rule concrete rather than abstract. You stop thinking about the rule and start feeling when something sounds off.

3. Write the wrong version first, then correct it. Write “I borrowed him my notes” — then cross it out and write “I lent him my notes.” Error-correction studies consistently show that self-correction produces stronger retention than reading the correct form alone.² Apply this method to each pair in this list and you’ll have a personal workbook of fixed false friends. For building this kind of vocabulary practice into a system, the phrasal verb particles guide on this site uses the same approach for verb-particle combinations.

False Friends in English — Video Lesson [影片教學]

快速練習測驗 [Quick Quiz: Spot the False Friend]

Choose the correct word in each sentence. Answers below.

1. The lecture was really ___. (boring / bored)
2. Can you ___ your notes when you come to the office? (bring / take)
3. She ___ me that the project was delayed. (said / told)
4. I ___ a strange noise while working late. (listened / heard)
5. Air pollution ___ the health of millions of people each year. (affects / effects)
6. The company updated ___ refund policy last month. (its / it’s)
7. There were ___ complaints this quarter than last. (fewer / less)

Answers: 1. boring (it produced boredom)  |  2. bring (coming toward your location)  |  3. told (tell + person)  |  4. heard (passive, unintentional)  |  5. affects (verb)  |  6. its (possessive, no apostrophe)  |  7. fewer (complaints are countable)

Sources

1. Llach, M. P. A. (2015). “L1-influence on L2 vocabulary errors.” System, Elsevier — Research on verb-selection errors by L1 Chinese speakers at intermediate English proficiency, showing higher error rates than Spanish/German L1 groups on single-lexeme pairs.
2. Cambridge University Press — Error Correction in Language Learning — Overview of self-correction research showing stronger retention outcomes compared to passive reading of correct forms.
3. Cambridge Dictionary — Bring or Take — Reference for the directional distinction between bring and take, with native speaker example sentences.