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[False friends #8]

Task (1): The English words rise and raise can be said to be false friends of Norwegian reise. Use the corpus to find examples of this; give two examples for each word.
Task (2): Use examples from the corpus to show that rise and raise can be close in meaning to Norwegian reise. (Remember to include more than the base form in your searches.)
Task (3): How do you explain that false friends such as rise/raise and reise also seem to have overlapping meanings?
Task (4): What meanings may rise/raise and reise take on when they are "true friends"? (I.e. they have the same meaning.)



Suggested answer:
(1) Examples of rise as a false friend of reise:
The politics of women's rights where women are more likely to rise to the top...
... when the glow suddenly began rising beneath our canoe...

Examples of raise as a false friend of reise:
It was for him that she had raised Luke to be the man he was.
as the playing becomes more confident he raises his head to watch.

(2) The following examples show rise and raise in contexts where they are close in meaning to Norwegian reise:
Peggy rises awkwardly from her chair to turn it off.
This raises an important question...

(3) Although rise/raise and reise may be said to be false friends, they also have overlapping meanings, acting as "true friends". The different contexts in which the words occur must be seen as the main reason for this split. In contexts such as those under (1), the English and Norwegian words differ in meaning, while in contexts such as those under (2), they have similar meanings. Words are coloured by their surroundings, and in this case the apparently false friends can in some contexts take on similar meanings. Some words, however, are more stable false friends, e.g. "accurate" vs. "akkurat", "pig" vs. "pigg".

(4) Rise and reise may take on the following meaning when they are true friends: "get to one's feet" ("reise seg").
Raise and reise may take on the following meaning when they are true friends: "to put forward for consideration" ("stille") or "erect" ("sette opp"). (Other meanings can also be found, particularly in the case of raise vs. reise.)

Read about false friends here.
Terminology: false friends, context.

Last updated 4 October 2023, SOE
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