False cognates

[Salmoneus]

Proto-Germanic: /ju:z/, 2nd person plural pronoun
Modern English (dialectical): /ju:z/, 2nd person plural pronoun

Technically, it's vaguely possible that these aren't literally false cognates, but they're certainly misleading ones at best!

What do I mean? Well, "you'se" doesn't descend directly from *ju:z. Why not? Because *ju:z was altered analogically to *ji:z thousands of years ago, to match the first person; it subsequently regualrly lost its -z, and ended up as "modern" (if very rare) "ye".

Meanwhile, the Germanic dative form of *ju:z was, of course, *izwiz. Why? nobody knows. The PIE form is obscure; some people guess something like *usmei, which could be somehow related to nominative *yuHs, but it's not perfect. And *izwiz doesn't look like it comes from it. Given the *i and the *z and the *w, it's tempting to see a later relation to *ju:z, but it involves basically scrambling the letters, so it doesn't look that appealing an idea on the surface. I guess it's probably irregularly related somehow, because why would they randomly borrow a dative pronoun from somewhere, but it's certainly not straightforward.

But from *izwiz, we go:
*iwwiz [a "regular" sound change that occurs in literally only one word. It's a more specific form of a more general sound change (voiced fricatives assimilate to following *w) that applies to a grand total of TWO words (the other being fedwor>four). Which kind of points out how bizarre *izwiz is in the first place]
*iwwi
*iuwi
*iuw
*juw / *ju:

...then we just have to take that dative form and randomly use it as a nominative instead, even though this doesn't happen in other pronouns (where instead the dative often replaces the accusative, and/or merges with the accusative through regular sound change), creating the only pronoun that fails to distinguish nominative and accusative cases, because why not.

...and then from there we simply analogically add plural -z *(which is also, by the way, completely and frustratingly mysterious in origin!), and we end up....

...right where we started.


I mean, imagine explaining this if it were an obscure language family. Firstly, when you told them two closely related languages had exactly the same 2nd person plual nominative pronoun, they wouldn't believe you if you told them they weren't directly cognate. And then, once they had worked out that they couldn't be cognate, if you tried to suggest the above explanation for how you thought they were still related, they wouldn't believe you. They'd think you were a crackpot who refused to give up on your theory and were resorting to special pleading to keep it from falling apart.

"So, first we have to derive a dative form, but it has to be derived by randomly scrambling the letters and adding an affix, in a way not paralleled in the other pronouns. Then we subject that dative form to a sound change so specific that it only applies to this one word. Then the usual regular sound changes, then we just switch the case from dative to nominative for no reason at all and without any parallel, displacing a perfectly functional existing nominative form, then we make the plural singular, so to create a new plural we just stick on this plural ending we've taken from a nominal declension, that is also of totally obscure origin but it must make sense somehow I'm sure, and there we go!"

"...or it could just be a loanword."

"NO!"

[Sequor]

English /aɪ-/ in island, previously written iland and pronounced *[ˈiːland] (from Proto-Germanic *awjō, cognate with Swedish ö)
Hebrew אי romanized ’î 'island'

Latin Jovem *[ˈjɔwẽˑ] 'Jupiter' (one of the main gods of the Roman pantheon)
Hebrew יהוה‎ YHWH, probably [jahˈwe] in ancient native Hebrew 'God'

[Sequor]

Ancient Greek καλέω kaléō 'to call'
English to call

[k1234567890y]

Italian lieve "light, delicate, gentle, slight, minor, mild (punishment, sentence)" and Finnish lievä "mild, slight, moderate"

[WeepingElf]

One would not expect cognates from such different and apparently unrelated languages, but:

taberu 'to eat' vs. tafeln 'to dine'

Of course, tafeln is derived from the noun Tafel 'table', which is a loan from Latin tabula. At least, it helped me remember the Japanese word.

And I found the following amusing:

kane 'bell' vs. Kanne 'jug'

[k1234567890y]

English dairy and Proto-Slavic *dojiti "to milk" (cf. Polish doić "to milk")

They have similar sounds and are semantically related, but etymologically they are from different PIE roots.

[All4Ɇn]

This one is only partially a false cognate but I think it's really interesting:
oggi "today"
aujourd'hui "today"

When I was first learning Italian and French I just assumed that oggi was essentially a shortening of aujourd'hui by taking the first and last syllables and combining them together. Oggi is actually cognate with the hui part of the French, but the fact the French starts with /oʒ/ while the Italian starts with /ɔd͡ʒː/ & both end in /i/ is just a coincidence.

[ɶʙ ɞʛ]

Lietuva, Latvija. Surprised this one wasn't mentioned yet, maybe it seems too obvious. At the same time, it might not be definitively false.

[Sequor]

Azerbaijani qaqaş 'bro, mate'
Persian کاکا kākā 'elder brother, uncle'
Mandarin 哥哥 gēge 'elder brother'

Georgian გოგო gogo 'girl'
Manchu ᡤᡝᡤᡝ gege 'princess'

[Arayaz]

[snip]

I mean, imagine explaining this if it were an obscure language family. Firstly, when you told them two closely related languages had exactly the same 2nd person plual nominative pronoun, they wouldn't believe you if you told them they weren't directly cognate. And then, once they had worked out that they couldn't be cognate, if you tried to suggest the above explanation for how you thought they were still related, they wouldn't believe you. They'd think you were a crackpot who refused to give up on your theory and were resorting to special pleading to keep it from falling apart.

"So, first we have to derive a dative form, but it has to be derived by randomly scrambling the letters and adding an affix, in a way not paralleled in the other pronouns. Then we subject that dative form to a sound change so specific that it only applies to this one word. Then the usual regular sound changes, then we just switch the case from dative to nominative for no reason at all and without any parallel, displacing a perfectly functional existing nominative form, then we make the plural singular, so to create a new plural we just stick on this plural ending we've taken from a nominal declension, that is also of totally obscure origin but it must make sense somehow I'm sure, and there we go!"

"...or it could just be a loanword."

"NO!"

This is golden.

[vo1dwalk3r]

Correct thread this time! Has this one been posted already?

English rest 'to relax', from PIE *res- 'to rest'
English rest 'remainder', from Latin re- + PIE *steh2- 'to stand'

[Sequor]

Ge'ez ውርዙት wərzut 'youth, adolescence; manhood, maturity' (derived from ወርዘወ warzawa 'to become a young man; to mature; to act with courage')
Latin virtūtem 'courage, heroism; glory; manhood; virtue, moral worth' (derived from vir 'man')

[Arayaz]

Azerbaijani qaqaş 'bro, mate'
Persian کاکا kākā 'elder brother, uncle'
Mandarin 哥哥 gēge 'elder brother'

Georgian გოგო gogo 'girl'
Manchu ᡤᡝᡤᡝ gege 'princess'

And Swahili kaka "brother."

[Dormouse559]

trousers
trousse

In the past, trousse referred to a kind of hose (nowadays, it means "kit" or "pencil case"), but English apparently got its word from Scottish Gaelic triubhas.

[elgis]

• Dhivehi ކިހިލި [ki.hi.li]
• Tagalog kilikili

Both mean "armpit."

[k1234567890y]

* Georgian კაკაბი [kʼakʼabi] "patridge"
* Maori kākāpō [kaːkaːpɔː] "kakapo"
both words are used to indicate types of birds, though different types

[Arayaz]

* Georgian კაკაბი [kʼakʼabi] "patridge"
* Maori kākāpō [kaːkaːpɔː] "kakapo"
both words are used to indicate types of birds, though different types

As far as I can tell, these are derived from the birdcalls via onomatopoeia, so it may not be too surprising.

[Sequor]

English and
Tagdal ənda 'and, with'

[Salmoneus]

English "hat" (/hat/)
Korean "갓", (/kat/) 'a traditional Korean hat'.

It's made worse by the fact that, unlike a lot of East Asian headwear, the Korean gat looks exactly like a contemporaneous European hat (it's a sort of 'pilgrim hat' thing). If you'd told me the hat was introduced by English missionaries and that's why it has that name, I'd have totally believed you...

[arenti]

English dream - Russian дремать
English crush - Russian крушить
English flame - Russian пламя