Also vs. Also- Tricky False Friends Between German-English

In this series of blog post, I'm trying to help students avoid the most common mistakes with false friends between German and English. False friends (the official term being "false cognates") are pairs of words that are often similar in spelling but with a significantly different meaning. In the first part of the series, we looked at the difference between the English word "gift" and its German meaning. In this post, we look at "also" vs. "also" What is the difference?

The English word "also" translates as "auch" in German, whereas the German word "also" is best rendered into English as "so". E.g.

Ich hätte auch gern ein Glas Wein- I'd also like a glass of wine.

Also sollen wir ein Glas bestellen? So should we order a glass?

So as you can see, the meaning of the two words is not the same!

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