Talk:False cognate

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I proposes English "hole", Yucatec Maya "hool" (pronounced same) to be used as an example instead of "many" vs. "manhi", which is hostile to Nostratic hypothesis. Any opinion?

Sanxiyn 03:28, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] to have

One false cognate that I think is interesting is the verb "habeo" in Latin and "to have" in English and "haben" in German. They have the same meaning, all languages are indo-european, but it is not the same root, the root of have/haben is the same of "capio". I don't know if it fits here, but it's worth saying.Bruno Gripp 01:52, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

That's really worth noting, thanks :-) I was just about to "correct" something... From the article I got a false impression that all the three words are said to have different roots, but now I see the slash there. --213.138.138.89 16:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC) (K Valtakari)
There seems to be some feeling against this fact. I added have vs avoir and haben vs habere to the examples and they were immediately removed. I see no good reason for this, so I've put them back. A strange thing to hush up... garik 01:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, I do agree that one can really overdo the examples.

[edit] Many

Article gives English "many" and Korean "manhi" as an example of a false cognate.

I proposes that this may be a true cognate, in the light of Nostratic hypothesis. Let's start from English. English "many" came from Middle English "manye", Old English "manig", reconstructured Common Germanic "managa", Proto Indo-European "menegh", which meant 'many', or 'copious'. Reflexes in other Indo-European languages include Irish "minic" and Welsh "mynych", which mean 'frequent', descended from Common Celtic "minig". Also Russian "mnog(мног)" and Old Church Slavic "munogu", which mean 'abundant'. This is well-established and you can find it in PIE references.

On the Korean side, -i in "manhi" is adverbial suffix, so the root is "manh(많)". In Middle Korean this root is written "manhâ" (â for arae-a, first a is long tone). There are Written Mongolian "mandu" and Chuvash, a Turkic language, "mъnъ", which mean 'big', also attested Old Japanese "mane-si" meaning 'many', but replaced by "opo-si" already in the old time (from Old Japanese "opo" meaning 'big') thus results in modern "ooi(おおい)" but still meaning 'many', and Evenki form "man" meaning 'crowd'. This allows us to reconstruct Proto Altaic root "mana(ha)". This is more controversial, but can be found in literatures: Mongolian-Japanese relation pointed out by Ozawa Shigeo who compiled extensive Mongolian-Japanese dictionary, and also noted by Korean scholar Samuel Martin in "Lexical evidences relating Korean to Japanese", with sound correspondences and all. (Actually, since "m" and "n" is same in all reflexes, there's not much to do.)

This two reconstructed protoform can give rise to tentative Nostratic root "managha", and the rule that Nostratic /a/ gives PIE /e/ and loss of final vowel is regular. (See Allan Bomhard's book "Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis") To get Altaic form you need to assume /gh/ becomes /h/ between vowels, which is reasonable.

You may disagree. But I think there are reasons to believe that m-n- for "many" is likely to have very ancient root, and English "many" and Korean "manhi" may be a true cognate.

Sanxiyn 01:04, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Geez, maybe we could add ...(although some nostraticists think they might be related.)... in that case...

Thanks, Damian. I thought I was the only Westerner in the world to use the similarity between many and manhi as a mnemonic device. I had know idea it was a legitimate linguistic concept, with a name and all! Ed Poor

That's an interesting bit about manhi and many. I noted a long time ago that with Swedish många (many) and Tagalog mga (abbreviation for manga). In Tagalog and other Philippine languages, mga is used to indicate the plural; ang aso (the dog) and ang mga aso (the dogs). --Chris 9 July 2005 05:31 (UTC)
Hmmm, the Swedish word is related to the English, anyway...

Oops! I got tripped over a false friend in the typo (know) in the above sentence. The irony is spinning around in my tummy like an eel.

That's not a false friend; that's just a homophone. A false friend is a homophone that crosses language boundaries. But thanks for inadvertently pointing out the similarity among FCs, FFs, and homophones; I might include those in the next version of the article. --Damian Yerrick

[edit] Obrigado gozaimasu

Does anyone know the relationship (false cognate/ borrowing) between the Japanese arigato and the Portuguese obrigado? They both mean "Thanks." I seem to recall that the Portuguese were the first westerners in recorded history to visit Japan. Any ideas? If anyone knows, please add it to the appropriate entry... Steve Rapaport

Last time I checked, I was told that the Japanese borrowed that word from the Portuguese. --Damian Yerrick
If it helps, supposedly 'arigato' is a combination of 'ari'(there is-有り) and 'gato'(difficulty-難う). Meaning　there is a strong ethical custom among the Japanese to return favors,　like 'I owe you one' thing.--Jondel 09:52, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
BTW , Supposedly the Japanese word 'Tabacco' came from Portugese. Perhaps the Japanese 'Baka' and 'Bakero' ( 'stupid')came from 'Vaquero'(?) .--Jondel 00:24, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Is bakero a real japanese word? I couldn't find it at Jim Breen's online dictionary?
You are not thinking of the similar word Bakayarou where -yarou is a pejorative suffic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baka gives no examples of the "Vaca" etymology,
the kanji the word consists of mean "deer" and "horse", but that could be a later spelling.
I don't know if there are examples of the word in japanese, prior to the portuguese-japanese trade routes.
I think this FAQ might be of use. It addresses the obrigado coincidence. No mention of baka, but if it's written with kanji it's probably not foreign, "tabacco" notwithstanding (also addressed there). Lusanaherandraton 15:26, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Baka ("stupid") is old Japanese (possibly from Sanskrit moha "unenlightened", but this is conjecture), the deer-horse kanji were retrofitted. yarou is a derogatory term for "person", so bakayarou is "stupid person" and bakero is a colloquial contraction. Jpatokal 11:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I concur that "arigato" and "obrigado" are not related. But the similarity occurs to so many people maybe it belongs in the list on this wikipedia entry. I have a question about the Japanese/Arabic "anta". I don't know Arabic, but does "anta" actually exist in Japanese as a relative of the second-person pronoun "anata"? I've never encountered it.

Yes, it does. It's an (colloquial?) abbreviation of "anata", mainly - but not only - used by women. It'a not considered as polite as "anata". "Anata" also means "dear", as in "sweet-heart". The kanji for "anta" and "anata" is the same (貴方), but normally hiragana is used.

[edit] El dinnero

Is there any true cognation between English "dinner" and Spanish "dinero"?

No. "Dinner" comes from Latin disjejunare, to break a fast. (French dîner and déjeûner come from the same root, but were formed at different times.) "Dinero" comes from Latin denarius, a Roman monetary unit. -phma 04:41, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] that other type of false cognate

This may be a misuse of the term, but the meaning of false cognates I was brought up with were words from different languages that appeared similar, but had very different meanings. The classic example, of course, is embarassed in English and embarasada, or pregnant, in Spanish. Is this a false friend? If not, what do we call this and where does it belong? Italo Svevo

I would say embarrassed and embarazada(with a z) are false friends.
They possibly share the same etymological root,
but since the english word is borrowed from french or latin, they are not true cognates.
Interestingly, false friends in closely related languages are often true cognates.
Examples are English Leek, Swedish Lök (Onion). English Fang, German Fang(catch).
(I think this info should be added to the page.)

[edit] Gaijin

Is there any possible relation between the Romany/Calo word 'Gadjo' and the Japanese word 'Gaijin', both of which sound very similar and mean the same thing (I'm guessing not -- compare to other 'G' words like hebrew 'Gentile' and American 'Goddamfurner' that also mean the same thing). Only reason I am not sure is that the Romani (gypsies, zigeuner) roam so far and wide they could have theoretically picked up a word from almost anywhere... so I won't just discount it and add it in.


To be added to the list  : Japanese : Anata ( you in English ), Arabic (and Hebrew?) Anta ( also you in English ). --Jondel 09:48, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC).

Gadjo and Gaijin is also similar to the hebrew(or yiddish?) word Goy, meaning non-jewish.
Japanese even has the word Anta, it is a word used by girls and women, derived from Anata.
From a discussion at http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm, concerning sound resemblances between different languages: "Of course it's worse than that, since there's semantic leeway as well. Goyim means 'nations' (from goy 'nation'); though it's metaphorically used for 'non-Jews', it's certainly not an exact semantic match for a word meaning 'foreigner'. (Gaijin is a borrowing from Chinese wairén 'outside-person'.) I can't emphasize enough that inexact matches greatly multiply the chances for finding random resemblances." W=G seems a strange sound shift, but French from Germanic often shows a similar pattern, W=Gu. (Ward, Garder,; Wit, Guide,; (Swe)Vante(Mitten), Gant(Glove).)

[edit] Japanese greeting

Another Japanese question - twice recently I have heard a Japanese greeting that sounds very similar to the French "bonjour". Is it just my Western ears, or is there a relation? — Paul G 15:59, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Was this 'Dommo' (Dom-mo)? How was it used?--Jondel 08:57, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Here is what I could think of: ohayou, konnichiwa, kombanwa, ossu, doumo... -Iopq 01:21, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I hear this all the time and there's no relation at all. If you pronounce "Kon nichi wa" in a lazy way, it comes out like "Kn'shwaa" which really does sound a little like "B'jouaaaa". But while the French phrase means "[Have a] good day", the Japanese means "This day is [a good/bad day, isn't it?]". -- 210.162.163.144 07:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverted Edit

"...a false cognate stems from a comparable source but has come to have different meanings in two languages..." This seems to be completely wrong. A false cognate comes from different sources that have, purely by chance, evolved inte words which look very similar both in meaning and appearance. I revert your edit, since I neither could understand fully what you meant, nor believe it is correct. (What do you mean with "comparable source"?) I requote myself: "Interestingly, false friends in closely related languages are often true cognates. Examples are English Leek, Swedish Lök (Onion). English Fang, German Fang(catch). (I think this info should be added to the page.) " Are examples like these, what you are thinking about?

[edit] List of False Cognates

The "List of False Cognates" links to a "List of False Friends", =S, maybe we should make another page with a list of false cognates (such as en/jp: sô/so, nay/nai etc...)

[edit] Sanskrit

Where does the Sanskrit word come from, is it really unrelated to the common PIE root? http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=name&searchmode=none gives Sanskrit nama.

I believe the word was added as unrelated to the Japanese, which is probably true. I removed it, and ask also about the following lines:
  • Hebrew shesh (six) and Persian shesh (six)
    • There is a widespread theory that the Semitic languages (as a whole) are distantly related to Indo-European. If true, this would be an instance of distant cousins falling together, which is a different topic.
  • English house and Hungarian ház (house, block of flats)
    • Is it certain that the Hungarian is not a loan-word from German Haus?

On another topic, there are several distinct English meanings of chop; one of them (in chop suey) is derived from Chinese. Which of these senses does the Uzbek word represent. Septentrionalis 15:08, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

NB "шесть" (Shest') is Russian for "six". I doubt it is related to "shesh". --MacRusgail 18:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] False Cognates Within a Language?

I've added trawl and troll, two English words with extremely similar (though not identical) meanings, but with completely different etymologies. If they were in different languages there would be no question that they would be false cognates. Is there any reasonable argument for why they should not be so considered, just because they're in the same language?

Zsero 2 October 2005

I don't know the answer to that, but pen and pencil are similarly unrelated etymologically. Just thought I'd share. – Quadell (talk) 13:50, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Of course you can have false cognates within a language, just like you can have real cognates within a language. --BluePlatypus 03:55, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
True cognates within a language being called doublets, right? --Damian Yerrick 17:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] True cognates

English name and Japanese namae are true cognates (from Nostratic *lemne)) --Nixer 15:54, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

if you accept Nostratic, that is. Not exactly a mainstream proposition, but sure, not impossible either. dab (ᛏ) 16:00, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Japanese form from proto-Altaic *lihomona, English form - from PIE *(e)nomen. By the way, English know is an even more deep cognate with Chaneese kan to inquire, investigate, to see, look. I think we should place here the true false cognates only.--Nixer 16:13, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Also Korean manhi and English many are true cognates (from Nostratic *manga). Though in Korean it may be borrowing from Japanese manki. By the way, many in Russian is mnogo--Nixer 20:09, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Arabic akh (brother) and Mongolian akh (brother) ma be true cognates. Mongolian one is from proto-Altaic aka (elder brother), which is from proto-Eurasiatic haka - elder brother, which is from Borean haka - elder relative. In proto-Afroasiatic thas root is in form hk(k) - elder relative.--Nixer 13:02, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stop with the examples already.

Well, that's my opinion. I don't see how the article is helped by more examples. The point is to explain false cognates. I don't think they add enough value to the article to warrant the amount of discussion going on here regarding various words. If someone really wants to have a list though, I suggest it be moved to a seperate article (List of false cognates or similar). --BluePlatypus 03:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Great idea. Do it. -Iopq 08:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more. A lot of articles suffer from this problem (onomatopoeia, for example). A separate list of cognates is not really needed, as far as I am concerned: Wikipedia is not a general knowledgebase. — mark ✎ 19:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Source

http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-1906.html I'm reverting -Iopq 23:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arigato

"Japanese arigato (thanks) and Portuguese obrigado (thank you)"

Actually I have heard that the Japanese is a loanword - any comments on this? Domo is one of the native terms. --MacRusgail 18:11, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not a loanword. See gairaigo#One gairaigo misconception. --Kusunose 03:05, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] additions

Added: English persecution (from PIE root sequ - to follow) vs Russian presechenie (from PIE root sec - to cut). --Nixer 04:48, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] False False Cognates

I think English Cold and Russian Holod are both derived from Proto-IE: *g'elǝ- (compare Latin gelu, gelidus), so they would therefore not be false cognates. Twalls

Look here:[1]. This root does not have Slavic derivative.--Nixer 19:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Look here: [2] it says it's most likely from that root and discusses other theories -Iopq 13:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] False friends

False cognate is sometimes also loosely used to mean false friend. Is this even worth stating? I mean, it's not just loose, it's downright incorrect. garik 01:55, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic

Because they arrived in the English language about the same time, the words for Sheriff (from English "Shire Reeve" an officer of considerable power in the 11th century and the Arabic "Sharif," denoting a ruler. The latter was known to Crusaders shortly thereafter. The English word is sometimes listed as "derived" from Arabic, which is untrue (false cognate).

[edit] Very poor article

This article is based on wild speculation and overzealous dismissal of very real possibilities. For instance, to say off hand that the numbers SIX, SEVEN in English (Indo-European_ are accidentally, coincidentally similar to the corresponding Hebrew (Semitic)numbers SHESH, SHEV'A is perhaps going too far. Trying to invent so-called 'roots' of an imaginary language called "Proto-Indo-European" and "Proto-Semitic" using interpolations and permutations to attempt to prove this point is unscientific and obtuse. It would be more prudent to entertain the possibility that certain so-called false cognates are not so false after all.

[edit] Some of these "false cognates"

Can anyone tell me how the English evaporate and the Russian ispar'at' can be false cognates? They seem to be about a million miles from each other. I'm also a bit cautious about delete and udalit. Can anyone verify (from reliable sources) that these two are really false cognates? --さくら木 08:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

All two words need to be false cognates is to not be cognates, but to look enough like each other (and occupy enough common semantic space) that people might think they are. The first condition is not so bad - we have a pretty good idea that 'evaporate' and 'isparat' are not cognates; but the second is a matter of taste, really. There's no objective way of verifying it. But the two you've removed are a bit dubious to my taste too. garik 09:35, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
delete and udalit' are not cognates. udalit has root dal "far", so it is literally "to remove", "move away", it is used in computers "udalit' fayl" "delete a file".--Nixer 14:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
So they are "false cognates" then, because they sound and look somewhat similar but have different roots. They are not cognates but a false ones. Is that right? Dieter Simon 22:18, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
But the thing is that they don't sound or look the same! --さくら木 11:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
In fact the English word sounds like "delit".--Nixer 12:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
IMO delete sounds like "de-leet" and udalit "oo-duh-lit". You're right, there is a small similarity. But only a small one. --さくら木 13:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
What's the difference between leet and lit?--Nixer 13:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
"Leet" is (supposed to depict) a long sound, "lit" short. --さくら木 16:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

You said there is a small similarity between "udalit" and "delete". Any less similar than these four examples taken from the actual list in the article?:

  • Bangla kaata, English cut
  • Coptic per, Etruscan pera
  • Egyptian maRar, Japanese miru, Spanish mirar
  • English cheek, Russian scheka

It depends what you mean by "similar". Dieter Simon 20:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Well I'm not a linguist, but all of those examples you listed do sound similar to me. One should know how to pronounce both words in order to judge if they truly are false cognates. --さくら木 12:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
True enough, although occasionally spelling is, perversely, a better indicator of relatedness than pronunciation, since it can reflect an earlier pronunciation that's more obviously related (the spelling of knight, for example, is a better clue of its connection with German Knecht than its pronunciation [nait]); the issue is complicated further by the fact that many real cognates look very little like each other (e.g. English cow and Latin bos). Human families are a useful analogy: my brother looks very much like some members of our family, but doesn't look much like me. On the other hand, he also looks quite a lot like some people who have no connection to my family. We might call these people 'false relatives' of my brother. To judge whether two words 'truly are false cognates' is as subjective as judging whether two unrelated people 'truly are false relatives'. I might think unrelated person A looks just like my brother; you might disagree. There's no definitive answer. Saying someone is a 'false relative' of my brother would be no more interesting than saying 'doesn't that guy over there look a bit like Prince Philip?'; and to say something is a 'false cognate' is merely equivalent to saying: 'You think it's a cognate? Well it's not.' garik 13:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Hear, hear. It is a matter of what you see as a similarity. Dieter Simon 22:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Day

After seeing that someone had removed it, someone else had readded it, and someone then re-removed it, I'm restoring "day". One of the removers wrote "see definition ... both have roots in PIE". "False cognate" doesn't imply "not having roots in a common language", it means "not having a common root in a common language". The American Heritage Dictionary gives the PIE root "agh-" for "day" and the root "deiw-" for "diary".

Agree. When this was first added, I said to myself "That's gotta be a mistake." But I looked it up, and it is a great example. The OED says: "DAY: ... in no way related to L. dies...". It should stay. -- Dominus 15:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Interesting to which root of the above related Russian den'?--Nixer 16:23, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Because of the palatalized initial consonant I'm going to guess "diary" (cf. Latin "diēs") but I could be entirely wrong.
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