False cognate

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The term "false cognate" is sometimes used incorrectly for false friend.

False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That is, they appear to be or are sometimes considered cognates when in fact they are not. Note that even false cognates may have an indirect connection between them, even if they lack a common root.

As an example of false cognates, the word for "dog" in the Australian Aboriginal language Mbabaram happens to be dog, although there is no common ancestor or other connection between that language and English (the Mbabaram word evolved regularly from a protolinguistic form *gudaga). Similarly, in the Japanese language the word 'to occur' happens to be okoru.

The basic kinship terms mama and papa comprise a special case of false cognates (cf. !Kung ba, Chinese bàba, Persian baba, and French papa (all "dad"); or Navajo má, Chinese māma, Swahili mama, Quechua mama, and English "mama"). The striking cross-linguistical similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition (Jakobson 1962). According to Jakobson, these words are the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies; and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves. Thus, there is no need to ascribe the similarities to common ancestry. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that these terms are built up from speech sounds that are easiest to produce (bilabial stops like m and b and the basic vowel a). However, variants do occur; for example, in Fijian, the word for "mother" is nana, and in proto-Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was *papa (> ɸaɸa > haha). Furthermore, the modern Japanese word for "father," chichi, is from older titi. In fact, in Japanese the child's initial mamma is interpreted to mean "food". Similarly, in some Indian languages, such as Marathi, a child's articulation of "mum-mum" is interpreted to mean "food".

The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to describe false friends. One difference between false cognates and false friends is that while false cognates mean roughly the same thing in two languages, false friends bear two distinct (sometimes even opposite) meanings. In fact, a pair of false friends may be true cognates (see false friends: causes).

A related phenomenon is the expressive loan, which looks like a native construction, but is not.

Some historical linguists presume that all languages go back to a single common ancestor. Therefore, a pair of words whose earlier forms are distinct, yet similar, as far back as they've been traced, could in theory have come from a common root in an even earlier language, making them real cognates. The further back in time language reconstruction efforts go, however, the less confidence there can be in the outcome. Attempts at such reconstructions typically rely on just such pairings of superficially similar words, but the connections proposed by these theories tend to be conjectural, failing to document significant patterns of linguistic change. Under the disputed Nostratic theory and similar theories, some of these examples would indeed be distantly related cognates, but the evidence for reclassifying them as such is insufficient. The Nostratic hypothesis is however based on the comparative method, unlike some other superfamily hypotheses.

[edit] Examples

Arabic/Hebrew akh (brother) and Mongolian akh (brother)
Arabic ana (I) and Gondi ana (I)
Arabic anta (you, masculine singular) and Japanese anata / anta (you, singular)
Arabic ard (earth) and Dutch aard (earth)
Arabic sharif and English sheriff
Bangla fela (Throw Away/Put down) and English fell (to make something fall)
Bangla kaata (To cut) and English cut (to sever)
Bikol aki (child) and Korean agi (child)
Blackfoot aki (woman) and Even akhi (woman)
English dork and Russian durak
Coptic per (house) and Etruscan pera (house)
Egyptian kns (vagina) and Latin cunnus (vagina)
Egyptian mennu (food) and French menu
Egyptian *maRaR (to see, to look), Japanese miru (to look), and Spanish mirar (to look at, to watch)
English "among" and Bisayan "among" (accidentally included)
English am (first person present tense of to be), Etruscan am (to be), and Sumerian am (to be)
English and and Indonesian dan
English aye (yes, affirmative vote) and Japanese hai
English bad Persian bed
English boy and Japanese bōya (young male child)
English bullshit and Mandarin búshì (不是; isn't, not true)
English can and Japanese kan (cylindrical metal container)
English cheek and Russian scheka (щека; cheek)
English chop and Uzbek chop
English dairy and Russian doyar (дояр; milker), doyarka (milkmaid)
English day, daily and Spanish día (day) (or Latin dies (day) or even English diary)^[1]
English delete and Russian udalit' (удалить; to delete, remove)
English dog and Mbabaram dog
English dung and Korean 똥 ttong (excrement)
English earth and Hebrew erets (land)
English egg and Luganda eggi
English evaporate and Russian ispar'at' (испарять);
English eye and Hebrew ayin (eye)
English house and Hungarian ház (house, block of flats) (the Hungarian word has corresponding counterparts in other Uralic languages)
English hut and Russian hata (хата)
English island and isle
English it, Russian eto(это) and Tagalog eto/ito (it, this)
English laser and Scottish Gaelic lasair (light beam, flame)
English man and Latin humanus (people, mankind)
English mount (short form of "mountain"), and Hawaiian mauna (mountain)
English much and Spanish mucho
English neck/German Genick and Spanish nuca
English pan and Mandarin pan (pan, shallow plate)
English pen and pencil
English pear and Korean 배 pay, bae (Korean pear)
English persecution and Russian presechenie (persecution, suppression, injunction)
English reason and Russian razum
English seed and Korean 씨 ssi (pip)
English stone and Mandarin shítou (traditional 石頭, simplified 石头)
English strange and Russian stranno(странно)
English stranger and Russian strannik(странник)
English trawl (to fish by dragging a net) and English troll (to fish by trailing a line)
English viscosity and Russian v'azkost'
English why and Korean 왜 wae (what for)
Estonian/Finnish ei (no, not), Etruscan ei (no, not), and Norwegian ei, Swedish ej (not)
Estonian mina/Finnish minä (I), and Zulu mina (I)
Estonian ta (short form of tema) (he/she) and Mandarin tā (他) (he/she)
Etruscan ac (to make, act) and Sumerian ak (to make,act)
Etruscan an (he/she/it) and Sumerian ane (he/she/it)
Etruscan ipa (who, which) and Sumerian aba (who)
Etruscan mi (I/me) and Sumerian ma (I/me) and Korean na (I)
Finnish ja (and) and Japanese ya (and)
Finnish sinä (singular you) and Turkish sen (singular you)
French le (the) and Samoan le (the)
Ga ba (come) and Hebrew ba (come)
German Ach, so! and Japanese A‘, soo (I see)
German haben (to have) and Latin habere (to have)^[2]
German Kreuz (cross) and Russian krest (крест; cross)
Greek thesato and Russian sosat' (сосать; to suck)
Greek theos and Latin Deus (God)
Greek root -lab- and Sanskrit root -labh- (take)
Hawaiian kahuna (priest) and Hebrew kehunah (priesthood)
Hawaiian/Maori wahine (woman) and Latin vagina
Hebrew ari (lion) and Tamil ari (lion)
Hebrew dereh (road) and Russian doroga (дорога; road)
Hebrew shesh (six) and Persian shesh (six)
Indonesian dua (two) and Pashto dwa (two) and Korean dul (two)
Inuktitut kayak and Turkish kayık and Choco language group cayuca (rowing boat)
Italian micio (small cat) and Quechua michi (cat)
Japanese arigatō and Portuguese obrigado (thank you)
Japanese babā (disrespectful term meaning "old hag") and Russian baba (grandmother)
Kyrgyz ayal (woman) and Parji ayal (woman)
Korean doki (axe) and Mapuche Indian and Easter Island Polynesian toki (axe)
Luganda na ('and') and Dutch en (and)
Spanish y [i] ('and') and Serbian и/i [i] (and)