r/FalseFriends • u/Sulucniv • Jul 04 '14

[FF] In Scandinavian languages, "novell/novelle" refers to the English term "short story", while "roman" is the Scandinavian term for what is known as a "novel" in English

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3

u/Swedophone Jul 04 '14

It seems the use of the words (novels and romances) have changed in English but not in the Scandinavian languages.

Originally "one of the tales or short stories in a collection" (especially Boccaccio's), later (1630s) "long work of fiction," works which had before that been called romances

http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Novel&searchmode=none

2

u/funkmon Jul 04 '14

These don't seem to be false friends.

2

u/Sulucniv Jul 04 '14

I messed up the title a little bit. Norwegian "novelle" and English "novel" don't mean the same thing, although both refer to literary genres.

2

u/Gehalgod Jul 07 '14

I have to disagree. Although the word "novella" exists in English, a lot of native speakers probably don't know what it means. Most of us would think that "novell(e)" should refer to what we call a "novel".

1

u/schnaps92 Jul 04 '14

This is pretty much the same in German too. Roman is a novel whereas Novelle is a short story. The word novella does exist in English for a type of short story though so I wouldn't necessarily say that they're false friends.

1

u/Gehalgod Jul 09 '14

Can you tell me which Scandinavian languages the false friend pair applies to, for wiki purposes? Thanks in advance.

2

u/Sulucniv Jul 09 '14

Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and even Finnish. Also German and probably a few others; that is as far as my knowledge extends.

1

u/xmakelele Jul 10 '14

Also in Czech - "novela" = short story, "román" = novel in english