Lexical Shift

A long, long time ago, a group of warriors called the Normans arrived on an island off the coast of ancient Europe.  The Normans, speaking an ancient version of what we now call 'French' took over the land of the people that lived on this island, a place now called 'England.'  This is why modern day English, a Germanic language, has so many cognates with French, a Romantic (Latin origin) language.

Cognates help people like me, a non-native speaker, to put together phrases and describe things I wouldn't normally be able to describe because, with luck, if you say an English word with the right intonation and accent, it might end up sounding like a word that is actually used by the native speakers.

Unfortunately, there are always faux-amis: false friends.  Like those people who hag out with you, and as soon as you're not willing to take one for the team (read: them) they're out of there.  Faux amis are words that seem like they are the same word in both English and French, but are actually not, which leads to an exchange student's worst nightmare, MISUNDERSTANDING.

While French breakfast usually consists of bread with butter and jelly (preserves, if you may.), don't ask for "preservatifs," unless you like condoms on toasty baguettes.  

The worst part is when a bunch of faux-amis get together in a while bad friend party (like every party in high school I was never invited to) and decided to all shift over one meaning:

"Attendre" in French does not mean to 'attend,' it actually means to wait.

To attend is "Assister"- luckily, 'to assist' doesn't somehow turn back into a French verb that sounds like 'wait.'

The only thing that makes me wonder is how 'raisin' - the French word for 'grape' somehow got turned into the dried version of said fruit.  At least it didn't turn into a word for wine...