False cognates

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sangi39
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Re: False cognates

Post by sangi39 »

Squall wrote:What is a false cognate?
This list says that it has false cognates. I thought that false cognate is the eight item in the list below, but in this topic uses the definition of the fifth item.

1) Similar words, same origin, same meaning (origin, orīgine (Latin))
2) Similar words, same origin, different meaning (actual, actual(current in Spanish))
3) Different words, same origin, same meaning (beauty, bella (Latin))
4) Different words, same origin, different meaning (sure, sēcūrus(secure in Latin))
5) Similar words; different origin; same meaning (examples in this topic)
6) Similar words; different origin; different meaning (come, comer(eat in Portuguese))
7) Similar words; the origin does not matter; same meaning (includes 1 and 5)
8) Similar words; the origin does not matter; different meaning (includes 2 and 6)
From what I can remember, false cognates are words of similar form with similar meanings but without a common root, which would satisfy 5.

There are "false friends", which, IIRC, are words of similar form with a common root, but with a different meaning, which would satisfy 2 (it would also, from what I can tell, make them cognates). I think it might also cover 6 as well, but they wouldn't be cognates.

1) Similar words, same origin, same meaning (origin, orīgine (Latin)) = cognate
2) Similar words, same origin, different meaning (actual, actual(current in Spanish)) = cognate false friend
3) Different words, same origin, same meaning (beauty, bella (Latin)) = cognate
4) Different words, same origin, different meaning (sure, sēcūrus(secure in Latin)) = cognate
5) Similar words; different origin; same meaning (examples in this topic) = false cognate
6) Similar words; different origin; different meaning (come, comer(eat in Portuguese)) = non-cognate false friend
7) Similar words; the origin does not matter; same meaning (includes 1 and 5) = ?
8) Similar words; the origin does not matter; different meaning (includes 2 and 6) = false friend (cognate or non-cognate)

I'm not sure, though, if 1, 3 and 4 are distinguished with specific terms.
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Re: False cognates

Post by qwed117 »

1) Similar words, same origin, same meaning (origin, orīgine (Latin))
2) Similar words, same origin, different meaning (actual, actual(current in Spanish))
3) Different words, same origin, same meaning (beauty, bella (Latin))
4) Different words, same origin, different meaning (sure, sēcūrus(secure in Latin))
5) Similar words; different origin; same meaning (examples in this topic)
6) Similar words; different origin; different meaning (come, comer(eat in Portuguese))
7) Similar words; the origin does not matter; same meaning (includes 1 and 5)
8) Similar words; the origin does not matter; different meaning (includes 2 and 6)= false friend (cognate or non-cognate)
I believe 2, 4 and 5 to be "false cognates", 1-4 as cognates, 5 and 6 as coincidence, and 7 and 8 lazy branching.
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Re: False cognates

Post by GrandPiano »

Yeah, false cognates are basically words that you would think are cognates if you didn't know better but actually aren't. For example, the Mandarin word 给 gěi means "give" and is pronounced similarly enough to "give" that you might think that the two were cognates if you didn't know that English and Mandarin are completely unrelated languages (or too distantly related for historical linguists to figure out whether they're related). You might think that 给 could be a loanword, but the word is known to date back to before any Chinese language could have done any borrowing from English - I was going to say that "give" is too basic a word to have been borrowed, but then I remembered the kinds of English loans that exist in Japanese.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Dormouse559 »

Another example is the Germanic cognates of "have" versus Latin "habeo" and its reflexes (mentioned on the first page of the thread). They mean roughly the same thing, are often used in similar ways, look very similar, and appear in related language families, but don't actually share a root.
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Re: False cognates

Post by GrandPiano »

This also might have been mentioned already:

Japanese なに nani what ~ Swahili nani who
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Re: False cognates

Post by Thakowsaizmu »

Swahili and Japanese also share a locative marker, <-ni>, but Swahili is more relaxed with usage (interestingly, and also unrelated, when a Swahili noun takes the locative marker -ni, it changes noun class.)
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Re: False cognates

Post by clawgrip »

What do you mean by "more relaxed"?
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Re: False cognates

Post by Squall »

Portuguese 'porta' and English 'port'.

'Porta' means door, and 'porto' means 'port', the place where ships arrive and depart.

In computers and other appliances, 'port' is an entry where cables can be connected. In networks, computers have ports to communicate with other computers.
In Portuguese, computer port is 'porta', which originated from the mistranslation of 'port'.
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Re: False cognates

Post by CMunk »

Has :eng: day ~ :lat: dies been mentioned?
Or :deu: heute ~ :lat: hodie?
Edit: A quick search suggest they have not, and I'm pretty sure they are false cognates.
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Re: False cognates

Post by shimobaatar »

CMunk wrote:Has :eng: day ~ :lat: dies been mentioned?
Or :deu: heute ~ :lat: hodie?
Edit: A quick search suggest they have not, and I'm pretty sure they are false cognates.
According to Wiktionary, day is from PIE *dʰegʷʰ- "to burn", while diēs is from PIE *dyew- "sky, heaven".

hodiē seems to come from hōc + diē, apparently the ablative of hic + diēs "this day". Similarly, heute seems to come from the Old High German hiutu, apparently from hiu + tagu, neither of which Wiktionary provides working links for. However, I did some "digging", and the OHG instrumental singular of tag "day" (cognate with day) appears to be tagu. I couldn't find anything on hiu, though, but if my assumption about the tagu in hiu + tagu being the same as the instrumental singular of OHG tag is correct, then the -diē part of hodiē and the -te part of heute are false cognates, but I can't confirm the exact relationship of the ho- and heu- parts. They could be cognates, false cognates, or neither, although I'd probably bet on one of the first two options if I had to. Can anyone help out with this?

Anyway, hoy (from hodiē) was the first Spanish word I learned once I started learning the language in school. It was easy to remember since it reminded me of heute; it's interesting to learn that they're not actually true cognates (or, at least, not completely). [:D]
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Re: False cognates

Post by GrandPiano »

Are :zho: 喵 miāo and :eng: meow cognates or are they just similar by coincidence?
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Re: False cognates

Post by shimobaatar »

GrandPiano wrote:Are :zho: 喵 miāo and :eng: meow cognates or are they just similar by coincidence?
As far as I know, it's a coincidence. I read something a while ago (although I can't remember where, so I don't know how reliable I'd consider it now) that mentioned this. It also claimed that many languages have similar onomatopoeias, especially ones for animal sounds, and that meow resembled other words for cat sounds in languages all across the world. I definitely remember it mentioning Mandarin's miāo in particular, but I also remember it claiming that that word was related to the normal Mandarin word for "cat". Wiktionary has given me 貓 māo, which certainly resembles miāo when written in pinyin, but I couldn't find etymologies for either word, and I don't know enough about hanzi to say anything about any similarities that may or may not exist between the two written forms.

I also remember this article or whatever claiming that the name of the cat breed, the Egyptian Mau, came from the Ancient Eyptian word for "cat". The Wikipedia article on the breed also makes this claim, citing Middle Egyptian mw as the source of the word "Mau". Wiktionary claims the Ancient Egyptian word for "cat" was mjw, but mentions nothing about the term "Egyptian Mau" in English or the time period during which the word had that particular form. Neither of the two "sources" I just listed mentions anything about etymology, or practically anything else. It's also, as far as I know, very difficult to tell how Ancient Egyptian words would have actually been pronounced.

Anyway, I have a hard time believing some of the claims I mentioned above, but the point is that it appears that miāo and meow are false cognates, and that māo seems to have a false cognate in mw/mjw.

I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say about this, especially if they've heard similar hard-to-believe claims about near-universal onomatopoeias before, and/or if they know what the general consensus is about such claims. It would also be appreciated if someone could tell us more about whether or not the two Mandarin words mentioned here are etymologically and/or orthographically related. Any further information about the Egyptian words would also be very interesting. [:)]
Last edited by shimobaatar on 21 Apr 2015 02:53, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Dormouse559 »

shimobaatar wrote:onomatopoeias/"onomatopoeiae"
[:'(] For the sake of all that's good in the world, just pick one and stop torturing us with that 29-character monstrosity.
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Re: False cognates

Post by shimobaatar »

Dormouse559 wrote:
shimobaatar wrote:onomatopoeias/"onomatopoeiae"
[:'(] For the sake of all that's good in the world, just pick one and stop torturing us with that 29 character monstrosity.
It was meant partially as a joke, and partially as an attempt to avoid having people complain, but both of those went down the drain super quick, so I guess I'll edit it out.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Dezinaa »

I like "onomatopoeiae" because it has 5 vowel letters in a row.

According to this list on Wikipedia, most of the languages listed have similar words for "meow".
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Re: False cognates

Post by shimobaatar »

Dezinaa wrote:According to this list on Wikipedia, most of the languages listed have similar words for "meow".
Hmm, interesting. Thanks. I guess I should have believed it.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Prinsessa »

shimobaatar wrote:
CMunk wrote:Has :eng: day ~ :lat: dies been mentioned?
Or :deu: heute ~ :lat: hodie?
Edit: A quick search suggest they have not, and I'm pretty sure they are false cognates.
According to Wiktionary, day is from PIE *dʰegʷʰ- "to burn", while diēs is from PIE *dyew- "sky, heaven".

hodiē seems to come from hōc + diē, apparently the ablative of hic + diēs "this day". Similarly, heute seems to come from the Old High German hiutu, apparently from hiu + tagu, neither of which Wiktionary provides working links for. However, I did some "digging", and the OHG instrumental singular of tag "day" (cognate with day) appears to be tagu. I couldn't find anything on hiu, though, but if my assumption about the tagu in hiu + tagu being the same as the instrumental singular of OHG tag is correct, then the -diē part of hodiē and the -te part of heute are false cognates, but I can't confirm the exact relationship of the ho- and heu- parts. They could be cognates, false cognates, or neither, although I'd probably bet on one of the first two options if I had to. Can anyone help out with this?

Anyway, hoy (from hodiē) was the first Spanish word I learned once I started learning the language in school. It was easy to remember since it reminded me of heute; it's interesting to learn that they're not actually true cognates (or, at least, not completely). [:D]
Germanic h does not correspond to Latin h so the determiners are most likely unrelated. The Germanic word is most likely related to a word starting with <c> or <qu> in Latin, indeed common onsets for certain pronouns.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Avo »

The first part in heute has the same origin as the English pronoun he. There is also heuer meaning "this year" (<*hiu jāru), but outside of the High German area this word is archaic or entirely unknown. A shame, I like the word. [:(]
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Re: False cognates

Post by Lao Kou »

Avo wrote:There is also heuer meaning "this year" (<*hiu jāru), but outside of the High German area this word is archaic or entirely unknown. A shame, I like the word.
And rightly so! [:)] I'm going to be all over heuer like a cheap suit now. [<3]
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Re: False cognates

Post by Prinsessa »

Scandinavian has a word (usually coupled with a preposition) meaning 'last year' but none meaning 'this year'; however the same preposition is simply coupled with the word 'year' itself to express that, so I guess they're really the same thing. I don't think there's anything as simple for 'next year'.

i fjor = last year
i år = this year

Similarly 'yesterday' has a word used like this, where as 'today' simply uses 'day'.

i går = yesterday
i dag = today

This preposition 'i' can be used with a lot of basic words like 'night' and 'morning' to express 'tonight', 'tomorrow' and so on.

With the words referring to the past or the future, further prefixes can be added ad infinitum to express 'the x before x' and 'the x after x' and so on. Swedish examples:

i förrgår = the day before yesterday
i förrförrgår = the day before the day before yesterday

i morgon = tomorrow
i övermorgon = the day after tomorrow
i överövermorgon = the day after the day after tomorrow

And so on.
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