I was writing an email to someone in Ireland when I wanted to ask them to do something for me. “If you are agreeable…” I said and then stopped myself short.
I was suddenly convinced that I had the wrong word.
I was sure I was asking these people if they were pleasant. Wasn’t I ?

I was being caught by one of the false friends of translation.
Those words which are almost identical in both languages yet which, over time have changed nuance and have drifted somewhat apart.

When the grandson was here, last summer we stopped at a café on the Gorge d’Heric where he oogled and conquered a French Mamie at a nearby table.
“Mais il est agréable” she said, I thought it was maybe a little quaint to use that word about him, a little Jane Austin in fact when weather and walks were discribed as “agreeable”.
Just before Christmas, while on a walk ourselves, we met a lady from the village who remarked to us that the weather, which was unseasonably mild was “trés agréable”
The penny started to drop, the French agréable was a word which now meant pleasant or friendly and had in fact lost its meaning of agreement, as of two people deciding to adopt the same course.
The reverse had happened in English where the French meaning had now become old fashioned.
Thus my problem with the communication with Ireland.
I was using the word in the English sense having got accustomed to the French one.