Aspects of deceptive cognate derived loanwords in Kinyarwanda

Abstract

Loanwords derived from French and English deceptive cognates in Rwanda have caught the researchers’ attention because of the complexity they present in the areas of language contact and language teaching and learning. Deceptive cognates very often constitute obstacles to the understanding of the meaning and the pronunciation of a word because they have tricky similarities. In Rwanda, where most English learners have already acquired French as Target Language 2, failure to use the right word in English (Target Language 3) is a serious impediment to successful communication. The tendency is to consider the meaning and the pronunciation of an English word as that of a French word, especially when both words have the same spelling.