Careful with your Cognates

There are a lot of words that are the same in both the French and English language. The words are pronounced differently, of course, but one can understand the meaning and way the word is used by the speaker. I am finding all the cognates between the languages to be invaluable to me as I learn French. And now-a-days, if there is a word that I want to say in French, and I don't know the particular word, I'll make a guess-- saying the English word with my best attempt at a French accent. And it works sometimes, and other times, like yesterday, you say something you didn't mean to say all all.

Example: I was speaking with a very nice French lady who comes to my house so I can practice my French with her. (We have a reciprocating agreement: on a different day of the week I meet with her fourteen year old daughter and speak English with her, because she wants her speaking to improve. Her daughter's English is far better than my French, but whatever). Anyway, we were having a conversation about food. I was trying to tell her how much better, healthier, fresher, our family is eating here in France. She asked why I thought that was the case, and I tried to explain it's because most of the food I buy here if very, very fresh...there aren't a lot of processed foods here....and the bread doesn't have "preservatives" in it.

I didn't know the word for "preservatives" in French...but I guessed that it could be a cognate. A lot of the cognates are long words kinda like that. The facial expression she made when I said the word "preservatifs" (my guess at how to say the word sounding French) told me I was wrong in that guess.

And guess what? "Preservatif" in French translates to "condom" in English...yeah, that was embarrassing. I'm going to be much, much more carefully about making up cognates on my own from now on. Lesson learned.