Zompist Bboard Again

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

Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 2:48 pm 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.

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

Thanks.

Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:03 pm 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.

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

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')

Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 2:48 pmA 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.

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")

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 9:42 pm 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)

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.)

Two classics:

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

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 11:56 pm

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 9:42 pm 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.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:56 am 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

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.)

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.

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)

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:12 pmKorean 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”.

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

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:26 pmWell, 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.

Amusing.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:27 pm밀 /mil/ [miɭ]