Portuguese False Friends: Exam Tips (A2-B2)
False friends can easily sneak into your Portuguese learning journey, and they are almost always peppered throughout exams, especially between the A2 and B2 levels when you start feeling confident with vocabulary that “looks familiar.” Words like constipado (which means “having a cold,” not “constipated”) is a classic.
There are also words with different meanings but just look similar and you can easily forget their distinction if the context/text is confusing enough (e.g. partilhar vs partir or for me at least parecer vs aparecer).
From my exam experience, the false friends were usually in the reading questions. For me, the best strategy to tackle them was to slow down, translate the whole sentence, think about the context and the logic (e.g. for partilhar v partir, when both verbs are mentioned in the same paragraph, I need to figure out what is being shared and what being broken up into parts) and then think about whether the meaning of the words really fit with what the question is asking.
Some of the most common false friends also appear in listening and speaking sections. Words such as atender (to answer or assist, not “to attend” - and similarly assist may mean "to watch" not always "to assist"), and esquisito (strange, not “exquisite”) come up often in dialogues. If you’re taking an A2, B1, or B2 CAPLE exam, as you're studying it’s worth keeping a short list of these and revisiting them before practice tests. Soon enough you’ll start spotting patterns don’t match English expectations. One that I used to get stuck on was “atualmente” meaning “currently” rather than "actually" like my English brain assumed it would (and “na verdade” or “in fact” is equivalent to "actually" in English). Once you’ve internalised a few of these mismatches, you’ll feel more confident both in understanding what you read and in avoiding small but memorable mistakes when speaking. If you’re also able to showcase that you understand these differences (like starting a sentence with “Na verdade…” in a clarifying response in your speaking exam) you’ll come across as a natural Portuguese speaker and impress your examiners.