Belief in studying foreign languages

This is a trial translation on my diary in SNS AGORIA. "老師" in Chinese means a teacher in English, but "老" is old and "師" is teacher in Japanese. In my 1st look of "老師," I imagined "an old teacher," as most Japanese imagine. I thought "老"(old) didn't have a positive meaning, but in Chinese, this belief is not correct in general.
Such a similar word confuses me in studying foreign languages, because I have to create a new image of these words in remembering it. Perhaps, it might be easier to study a language, which I cannot imagine anything...

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I provide such a little bit confused words:"professor" in English and "professeur(es)" in French. The word "professor" in English means "a teacher in university," as we know. On the other hand, "professeur(es)" in French is a word, which means a teacher in high-school or in university.
As you see, we have to recognize the border between 2 words. Although we need to know belief on each word, we may often suffer in remembering slightly different words... (-_-;)