-Cognates Vs False cognatesTrue friends Vs False friends

1/False friends are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that
look or sound similar, but differ in meaning. An example is Portuguese raro
"rare" vs. Spanish raro "strange".
2/False cognates or false friends are words that share the same phonology and
perhaps orthography, in languages with similar orthographic systems, but their
meanings are different or overlapping.
*British and American English:
One kind of false friend can occur when two speakers speak different varieties
of the same language. Speakers of British English and American English
sometimes have this problem, which was alluded to in George Bernard Shaw's
statement "England and America are two countries separated by a common
language" .For example, in the UK, to "table" a motion means to place it on the
agenda (to bring it to the table for consideration), while in the US it means
exactly the opposite "to remove it from consideration" (to lay it aside on the
table rather than hold it up for consideration).

*Causes of false cognates:

1-Shared etymology
If Language A borrowed a word from Language B, or both
borrowed the word from a third language or inherited it from a
common ancestor, and later the word shifted in meaning or
acquired additional meanings in at least one of these
languages, a native speaker of one language will face a false
friend when learning the other.
Demand in English and demande in French or domanda in
Italian are representative of a particularly treacherous sort of
false friend, in which despite a common origin the words
have differently shaded meanings. The French and Italian

homologues simply mean "request", not a forceful requirement

as in English.
2-Homonyms
In certain cases, false friends evolved separately in the different
languages. Words usually change by small shifts in
pronunciation accumulated over long periods and sometimes
converge by chance on the same pronunciation or look despite
having come from different roots.
e.g. Rat in German means council while in English mean the
rodent animal in sewers.
3-Homoglyphs
An Old and Middle English letter has become a false friend in
modern English: the letters thorn () and eth () were used
interchangeably to represent voiced and voiceless dental
fricatives now written in English as th (as in "thick" and "the").
4-Pseudo-anglicisms
Pseudo-anglicisms are new words formed from English morphemes
independently from an analogous English construct and with a different intended
meaning.
For example, in German: Oldtimer refers to an old car (or antique aircraft)
rather than an old person, while Handy refers to a mobile phone.

Some examples
-Since English, German and Dutch have many of the same etymological origins, there
actually are a great number of words in both languages that are very similar and do have the
same meaning (e.g. word/Wort/woord, book/Buch/boek, house/Haus/huis, water/Wasser/water
...). However, similar words with a different meaning are also quite common (e.g., German
bekommen means "to get", that is, "to come by", not "to become".
-Another example is the word gift, which in English and Dutch means a "present" but in
German and the Scandinavian languages means "poison".
-False friends can be especially confusing when meanings of words in one language are
similar to those in another, especially when context cannot help in resolving the confusion.

For example, German and Scandinavian "Hund" and Dutch "Hond" are the cognates of
English "hound", but whereas hund and hond refer to dogs in general, in English the sense has
been narrowed to dogs used for hunting. Conversely, the German "Dogge" and French
"dogue" refer to a specific kind of dog rather than to dogs in general.

Italian and English: (True Friends Vs False Friends)

-Recognizing Cognates:
Italian words that look like English words and have similar meanings are called cognates.
There are only minor differences in spelling. Some examples are:
dizionariodictionary
farmaciapharmacy
intelligenteintelligent
mercatomarket
museomuseum
necessarionecessary
oceanoocean
onestohonest
stazionestation
teatrotheater
Learning Italian is actually made easier by the fact that there are many word pairs like this.
On the other hand, words that look alike in two different languages but have different
meanings are called false cognates (false friends).
List of Italian False Cognates:
cameraroom (NOT a device for taking photographs)
candidoclean, spotless, innocent (NOT candid)
crudouncooked (NOT crude)
fastidioannoyance, boredom (NOT fastidious)
genitoriparents (NOT genitals)
libreriabookstore (NOT library)
magazzinostore, warehouse (NOT magazine)
parenterelative (NOT parent)
List of Italian Verb Cognates:
accompagnareto accompany
creareto create
dividereto divide
studiareto study
telefonareto telephone

List of Italian Verb False Cognates:

assistereto be present (NOT to assist)
attendereto wait for (NOT to attend to)
confrontareto compare (NOT to confront)
intendereto understand, hear, want (NOT to intend to)
tastareto touch, to feel (NOT to taste).