False cognates thread

[Otto Kretschmer]

List all false cognates you can find

Polish cnota (a virtue)
Hebrew txniut (modesty)

Polish krezus (a rich person)
Latin Crassus

Spanish derecho
Hebrew derech

German haben
Latin habere

A classic one
English emoticon
Japanese emoji

[Linguoboy]

Polish cnota (a virtue)
Hebrew txniut (modesty)

Polish krezus (a rich person)
Latin Crassus

Are these really false friends though? I don't really expect Polish vocabulary to function as a guide to Hebrew or vice versa.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Uhh... not false friends. It was supposed to be called false cognates.

Thanks.

[Linguoboy]

Uhh... not false friends. It was supposed to be called false cognates.

I thought false cognates not sounded similar but also had similar meanings. From your examples, I'm really not sure what you're asking for.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Wods in various languages that have a similar sound and meaning but are not related.

[Kuchigakatai]

I guess they could also be called non-cognate true friends.

"False cognate" does seem to be the appropriate term, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

Pali सन्त santa 'true; enlightened person'
Latin sānctus 'holy thing; a saint'
Spanish san 'St. [name]'
Mandarin 聖 shèng 'holy'

English door
Arabic دار dār 'house, building'

Latin ungula 'claw, hoof' (from PIE *h₃n(e)gʰ-)
Sanskrit अङ्गुल्यः aṅgulyaḥ 'fingers' (from PIE *h₂eng-, and cognate with Latin angulus 'corner, angle')

A classic one
English emoticon
Japanese emoji

I've wondered before whether these are really unrelated. Maybe they're related, the kanji being rather a back-formation from "emoticon"... like, after a non-standard, colloquial voicing of emoochikon to "emoji-". I especially suspect this considering [ti di] aren't native syllables in Japanese, even though some speakers can pronounce them nowadays as part of foreign vocabulary.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

As far as I can tell, it's a weird coincidence; the Japanese spelling is 絵文字 (emoji - "picture character"), coined from pre-existing words. Every source I can find says the phonetic similarity is accidental.

A few more Japanese examples:

Japanese: 切る (kiru - "to cut, to sever")
English: kill ("to forcibly terminate the existence of")

Japanese: 戸 (to - "door, gate")
English: door (has the same meaning)

Japanese: パン (pan - "bread")
Spanish, Portuguese: pan ("bread")
English: pan ("flat sheet with a slightly recessed surface, or a shallow container for cooking")

On which note —
French: pain ("bread")
English: pain ("an extremely unpleasant sensation; (mostly literary or archaic) penalty")

[zompist]

A few more Japanese examples:
Japanese: パン (pan - "bread")
Spanish, Portuguese: pan ("bread")

Sorry, that's a false false cognate! The Japanese is a borrowing.

(and the Portuguese is pão)

[Ares Land]

French spelling is supposedly etymological; though sometimes the etymology was simply wrong:

poids 'weight' < pensum with a d added from pondus (not the actual etymology!)
legs 'inheritance' < laisser and not from léguer ('leave as inheritance'), ultimately from lex

Historically, savoir was written, sçavoir, from Latin scire. (Actually < sapere)

avoir / have are not cognate, of course.

(Since Crassus was mentioned, I'm suprised to learn that crasse, 'dirt' and Crassus are related.)

[WeepingElf]

Two classics:

Greek theos vs. Latin deus vs. Nahuatl teotl 'god'
English name vs. Japanese namae 'name'

[Rounin Ryuuji]

A few more Japanese examples:
Japanese: パン (pan - "bread")
Spanish, Portuguese: pan ("bread")

Sorry, that's a false false cognate! The Japanese is a borrowing.

(and the Portuguese is pão)

Oops on the Portuguese one, but I meant that the Romance word (borrowed into Japanese) was a false cognate of the English word for the cooking implement.

[Travis B.]

avoir / have are not cognate, of course.

Of course, that leads to my favorite example in this sort of discussion:

Standard German haben
Latin habeō

[Richard W]

English: to die
Thai: /ta:i/ ตาย 'to die'

English: to be, and compare 'been' and German ich bin
Thai: /pen/ เป็น 'to be', 'to live'

English: to cut
Thai: /kàt/ กัด 'to bite'
Thai: /kùt/ กุด 'amputated'
Thai: /kʰùt/ ขุด 'to dig'

English: soup
Thai: /sùːp/ สูป 'watery food, curry'. Oddly, dictionaries seem to expect us to use the disyllabic form, /sǔː pàʔ/ สูปะ.

English: barn
Thai: /bâːn/ บ้าน 'house'

Then there's the swapped pair:

English: ma
Thai: /mɛ̂ː/ แม่ 'mother'
(Actually, this is a common human tendency.)

English: mare
Thai: /máː/ ม้า 'horse'
(Actually, there is a possibility that this pair is related, being a Germano-Tocharian word loaned to the Far East.)

English: pa
Thai: /pʰɔ̂ː/ พ่อ 'father'
(Another example that sound and meaning are not independent.)

[Vijay]

A lot of Dravidian languages have words for 'you' that sound pretty similar to 你 in Sinitic languages. Some at least also have words for 'to see' that sound similar to 看.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Also, I'm reminded of —

Japanese: 見る (miru, "to see")
Various Romance words of the same meaning, Spanish mirar, French mirer (archaic, "to stare").

Japanese: ある・有る・在る (aru, "there is, there are")
Classical Japanese: あり・有り・在り (ari, "be, is, are")
English: are, aren't

Mandarin: 我 (wǒ, "I, me")
Archaic Japanese: 我 (ware, wa- "I, me")

French: huis ("door, entrance")
Dutch: huis ("house")

Portuguese: raiz ("root")
English: rice

Mandarin readings of surnames: Li, Lee (variously 李 Lǐ - "Plum", 黎 - Lí "Black, Dark, Dusky"; 理, also Lǐ "Reason, Principle"
English surnames: Lee, Lea, Leigh, and their derivatives, originally meaning "meadow"

Korean Surname: 박 (Bak), usually rendered into English as "Park", but meaning "gourd"
English Surname: Park, Parks (where not derived from the above, of course)

[Linguoboy]

Korean Surname: 박 (Bak), usually rendered into English as "Park", but meaning "gourd"

Yeah, no. The surname is derived from Chinese 朴 “simple, naïve” and has nothing at all to do with the native word for “gourd”.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Well, well, I've been taken in by a false cognate myself.

[Linguoboy]

Well, well, I've been taken in by a false cognate myself.

If I remember correctly, the actual cognate is 밝- /palk-/ "to be bright" and the Chinese character was chosen for its phonetic value alone.

My favourite Korean false cognate is 보리 /poli/ [po̞ɾi] "barley". Though 밀 /mil/ [miɭ] "wheat" and English meal isn't bad either.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Amusing.

[Vijay]

밀 /mil/ [miɭ]