See the look on this dog’s face? This clearly expresses my own sentiments after coming upon an English word in “The Deerslayer” by James Fenimore Cooper that so clearly seemed to be a cognate of a Spanish word in which I was well versed yet that so clearly did NOT mean what I thought it should.

Here is the sentence: “Master March may find it pleasant to traduce us, but sooner or later he’ll repent!”

If you already knew the meaning of the word “traduce,” give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back, or high five this dog. Do it anyway — he’s adorable.

“Traduce” is not a commonly used English word, by any matter, but the verb “traducir,” which has a conjugated form that is “traduce,” IS a commonly used Spanish word. In fact, it’s one that I used very often during my three decades of teaching, and you’ll see why in a minute, so when I saw the word in that novel, my mind took it to mean one thing while it really means something else.

When words look the same in two different languages yet have entirely different meanings, they are false cognates. “Embarazada” is considered to be one of the most humorous. It looks like our word for “embarrassed,” but it means “pregnant;” thus, if you announce you are “embarazada” to your Spanish-speaking friends, you might wonder why they are all congratulating you and asking when the baby is due. Don’t ask someone where the “éxito” is, thinking you’ve just asked them where the “exit” is — you’ve asked them where the “success” is, and I doubt they know the answer.

Let’s get back to “traduce.”

traduce — the English word meaning “to injure by speaking ill of,” to betray, to shame or blame by misrepresentation, etc.

traduce — a Spanish conjugated form of the verb “traducir” meaning “to translate”

These two words, though they now have quite different meanings, came from the same Latin verb traducere which means “to lead across, transfer, degrade.” The English meaning of the word followed the path of degradation. The speaker of the sentence referenced above thought that Master March had been speaking ill of her, in a degrading manner. The Spanish verb’s meaning followed the path of transferring one thing to another, which is what you do when you translate something.

Every day, I would have my students “translate” from one language to another, and if they weren’t getting that instruction from me, they were seeing that verb in directions on worksheets, in their textbooks, etc., so they and I had daily encounters with the Spanish verb of “traducir,” often including that one form “traduce.”

Therefore, I am very well accustomed to seeing and using and understanding the Spanish word, but I doubt I’ve come upon the English word of “traduce” much at all, if ever, before reading “The Deerslayer.” Seeing it brought my reading to a standstill because my mind interpreted it as “Master March may find it pleasant to translate us, but sooner or later he’ll repent!” Translate us? What does that mean?

Clearly, I immediately realized, “traduce” in English did not mean “translate,” so I looked it up and found what it does mean — the following paragraph in the novel already had led me to a fairly correct understanding of the word, but I like to be thorough, and I needed to know if there was some connection to the Spanish word I already knew. After clarifying things with a dictionary, the sentence made perfect sense, but I also realized that I’d encountered a somewhat false cognate of which I wasn’t previously aware.

Seeing the etymology of the words, though, shows me that they actually are cognates because they are related to each other, but their meanings have swayed far from their roots. They’ve become distant relations, let’s say.

“Traduce” emphasizes the distress felt by the victim, so, if you’ll indulge a bit of melodramatics on my part, I was quite “traduced” by what I felt to be a pretty strong cognate cognizance that let me down when I most needed it — while reading a book! Okay, that’s definitely a stretch.

If you are someone who speaks ill of someone else in order to betray that person, then you are a “traducer,” and what you are doing could be called “traducement.”

Let me give you an assignment involving real false cognates. These are ALL Spanish words, but you will think they are English words. Try to guess what each means.

* once

* arena

* red

* pie

* papa

They surely look like words that I could logically put together in English to say something like, “I once went to an arena and had some red pie with my papa,” but in Spanish those words mean the following:

scroll down

keep scrolling

a little further

* eleven

* sand

* net

* foot

* potato

Those are true false cognates!

Until next time. I hope you aren’t “traduced” by anyone.

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Tammy Marshall

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