Random opposites

[zompist]

I was just looking at a Hausa grammar, and learned that "he" is shī. (And pronouns do have a gender distinction.)

Can you think of other words like this? That is, language pairs where roughly the same phonetic word has opposite meanings.

Greek ναί 'yes' comes close, cf. Czech ne or Swedish nej.

[Travis B.]

You can say 'hello' in Hungarian by saying szia, pronounced almost identically to NAE see ya (mind you, you can also say 'goodbye' by saying szia as well).

[kosen444]

There are words in English that can mean their exact opposite – like oversight, which is either careful watching or a mistake; sanction, which can be to allow or to punish; or dust, which is either to add fine particles or to take them away

[Darren]

Georgian has mama "father" and deda "mother"

French inhabité "uninhabited"

[hwhatting]

Time to wheel out the classics, which I like especially because they're from closely related languages, not accidental look-alikes from different language families:
Russian urod means "ugly person" while Polish uroda means "beauty".
Russian zapominat' means "remember", while Polish zapominać means "forget".

[Raphael]

There are words in English that can mean their exact opposite – like oversight, which is either careful watching or a mistake; sanction, which can be to allow or to punish; or dust, which is either to add fine particles or to take them away

Oh, good ones!

[zyxw59]

Polish tak "yes"
Indonesian tak "no"

Combined with the fact that the Polish and Indonesian flags are the same but upside-down

[alice]

The first and second person plural pronouns in Swedish are vi and ni respectively, and are the other way around in a certain IAL.

[Raphael]

Somewhat belated addition:

Greek ναί 'yes' comes close, cf. Czech ne or Swedish nej.

"neh" also means "no" in some colloquial variants of German.

[Travis B.]

Somewhat belated addition:

Greek ναί 'yes' comes close, cf. Czech ne or Swedish nej.

"neh" also means "no" in some colloquial variants of German.

Words starting with /n/ loom large for negatives in good portions of IE.

[Raphael]

Words starting with /n/ loom large for negatives in good portions of IE.

Such as, for instance, the word "negatives" itself.

[Richard W]

I was just looking at a Hausa grammar, and learned that "he" is shī. (And pronouns do have a gender distinction.)

Can you think of other words like this? That is, language pairs where roughly the same phonetic word has opposite meanings.

And Welsh for 'she' is hi.

[bradrn]

I was just looking at a Hausa grammar, and learned that "he" is shī. (And pronouns do have a gender distinction.)

Can you think of other words like this? That is, language pairs where roughly the same phonetic word has opposite meanings.

And Welsh for 'she' is hi.

In Hebrew too. (Where, for good measure, ‘he’ is hu, cf. ‘who’.)

[linguistcat]

Somewhat belated addition:

Greek ναί 'yes' comes close, cf. Czech ne or Swedish nej.

"neh" also means "no" in some colloquial variants of German.

Words starting with /n/ loom large for negatives in good portions of IE.

ない nai in Japanese also means isn't/not.

[WeepingElf]

Somewhat belated addition:

Greek ναί 'yes' comes close, cf. Czech ne or Swedish nej.

"neh" also means "no" in some colloquial variants of German.

Words starting with /n/ loom large for negatives in good portions of IE.

Yes - it is inherited from PIE. English un- and Greek a(n)- also have this origin.

[kosen444]

One that comes to mind is the Japanese "hai" meaning "yes," while in Romanian, "hai" is more like "come on" or "let’s go." Not exact opposites, but still feels funny when you hear it the first time.

[/nɒtɛndəduːd/]

in english, to "abandon something" is to leave something without intention of returning to it, but to "work at something with abandon" is to work at something feverishly.

[Glass Half Baked]

One Korean word for yes is [ne]. What's funny is that another word for yes (the list goes on) is [je]. So occasionally you'll hear English speakers joke "what say you, yei or nei?" and the joke is they're both the same.

[Mornche Geddick]

There are words in English that can mean their exact opposite – like oversight, which is either careful watching or a mistake; sanction, which can be to allow or to punish; or dust, which is either to add fine particles or to take them away

And cleave, which means to cling together or break apart.