Actuellement - French Mistake

Mistakes will always be made in French, and now you can learn from them.

Potential mistake: Actuellement

Explanation: The French word actuellement looks an awful lot like the English word "actually," but looks can be deceiving: it's actually a false cognate, because actuellement means "right now, currently," and the French equivalent of "actually" is en fait or vraiment. I see actuellement used to mean "actually" so often that I sometimes have to read the sentence two or three times to decide what the person actually meant. Ditto for the French adjective actuel, which means "current," not "actual," which is equivalent to réel or vrai. If you can remember that actualité refers to current events, you shouldn't have any trouble with the others.

Related lesson: False cognates