About friends in business and law

People dealing with language, including learners, teachers and translators, are wary of false friends: mistakes made when speaking another language using words from one language that resemble words in another.?

There are plenty of examples. In French, a délai is not a delay, but a deadline. A contribuente in Italian contributes nothing but taxes. Fiscal can relate to money and taxes in Spain, but the noun stands for a public prosecutor. And none of the many uses of provision work in German - where it means commission.

We read and hear a lot about such friends. What we seldom hear about, though, are friends of another type. In a big world, there must be more, and when some are false, others must be true. And they exist indeed: English words that have made their way into other languages while retaining their meaning. We use them. We understand them. And we do so in the right way. Thus, they are not false, but true. And they are often so established in the international arena, so widely used in a country that it is almost impossible to replace them with a local language term.?

Compliance is a topic everywhere, many countries have corporate governance codes, companies embark on joint ventures, lawyers conduct due diligence, and Edward Snowden is a whistleblower. It is still easy to fall for wrong ones: public viewing has never been a party, and nobody has a home office at home. Mobbing, on the other hand, has evolved: often mistaken for bullying, it is also recognised in the context of mobbing at the workplace now.?

As not everybody can be your friend -true or false-, there must be a third category: NO friends at all! These are simply not understood outside a specific country, i.e. endemic to a particular jurisdiction.?

The UK and the US share the same language, but a Calderbank letter (UK) is as mysterious to a US lawyer as a Mary Carter agreement (US) to a UK one. While you may say that we are separated by the Atlantic Ocean, there is no such ocean between England and Scotland. Yet you will not find brocards, irritancies, or vitious intromitters between Blackpool and Dover. The same applies to Isaac Wunder orders (Ireland), faint pleaders (Canada), greenwood duties (Australia) and cowles (India).

So when you play with friends, be aware! I have collected a few true ones (see picture). They work in many countries and languages. Maybe in yours, too.