The linguistic interference phenomenon of false friends has always been present in language as a process of divergence between two languages or linguistic varieties. It concerns cognates (either due to borrowing or a common origin) whose meanings have diverged over time. One of the main sources of semantic divergence are metaphor and metonymy that have brought about pairs of false friends such as retirement and retiro, or retirada in English and Spanish, respectively; and the pairs αφυπηρέτηση, σύντα- ξη, and συνταξιοδότηση, in Standard Modern Greek (SMG, hereinafter) and Cypriot Standard Greek (CSG, hereinafter). These nouns are all partial semantic friends (they differ in relation to at least one of their meanings) and their emergence is seen in detail accompanied by examples clarifying their semantics and pragmatics.
Semantic (partial) false friends, retirement, jubilación, retiro, retirada, Standard Modern Greek, Cypriot Standard Greek, English, Spanish
The linguistic interference phenomenon known as false friends is usually seen in the abundant relevant bibliography on the topic as a process that occurs between two (or more, according to case) specific languages and it is considered a clearly defined process between two communication systems, in which the speakers of one of those are not capable (without previous relevant teaching) of understanding the speakers of the other language and vice versa. The term false friend itself was created in order to refer to terms that are the same or very similar between two linguistic systems that no one would dare to claim that they are not two different languages: French and English (Koessler and Derocquigny, 1928).
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