False cognate

The term "false cognate" is sometimes used incorrectly for False friend.

False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That is, they appear to be, or are sometimes considered, cognates, when in fact they are not.

Even if false cognates lack a common root, there may still be an indirect connection between them.

Phenomenon

As an example of false cognates, the word for "dog" in the Australian Aboriginal language Mbabaram happens to be dog, although there is no common ancestor or other connection between that language and English (the Mbabaram word evolved regularly from a protolinguistic form *gudaga). Similarly, in the Japanese language the word 'to occur' happens to be okoru (起こる).

The basic kinship terms mama and papa comprise a special case of false cognates (cf. !Kung ba, Chinese bàba, Persian baba, and French papa (all "dad"); or Navajo má, Chinese māma, Swahili mama, Quechua mama, and English "mama"). The striking cross-linguistical similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition (Jakobson 1962). According to Jakobson, these words are the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies; and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves. Thus, there is no need to ascribe the similarities to common ancestry. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that these terms are built up from speech sounds that are easiest to produce (bilabial stops like m and b and the basic vowel a). However, variants do occur; for example, in Fijian, the word for "mother" is nana, and in proto-Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was *papa. Furthermore, the modern Japanese word for "father," chichi (父), is from older titi. In fact, in Japanese the child's initial mamma (まんま) is interpreted to mean "food". Similarly, in some Indian languages, such as Marathi, a child's articulation of "mum-mum" is interpreted to mean "food".

The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to describe false friends. One difference between false cognates and false friends is that while false cognates mean roughly the same thing in two languages, false friends bear two distinct (sometimes even opposite) meanings. In fact, a pair of false friends may be true cognates (see false friends: causes).

A related phenomenon is the expressive loan, which looks like a native construction, but is not.

Some historical linguists presume that all languages go back to a single common ancestor. Therefore, a pair of words whose earlier forms are distinct, yet similar, as far back as they have been traced, could in theory have come from a common root in an even earlier language, making them real cognates. The further back in time language reconstruction efforts go, however, the less confidence there can be in the outcome. Attempts at such reconstructions typically rely on just such pairings of superficially similar words, but the connections proposed by these theories tend to be conjectural, failing to document significant patterns of linguistic change. Under the disputed Nostratic theory and similar theories such as that of monogenesis, some of these examples would indeed be distantly related cognates, but the evidence for reclassifying them as such is insufficient. (Alternatively, apparent cognates in Eurasian language families far removed from each other could also be early loanwords, compare Wanderwort.) The Nostratic hypothesis is however based on the comparative method, unlike some other superfamily hypotheses.

Examples

• Arabic/Hebrew akh/aḥ (brother) and Mongolian akh (brother)
• Arabic ana (I) and Gondi ana (I)
• Arabic anta (you, masculine singular) and Japanese anata (貴方, あなた) / anta (あんた) (you, singular) and Malay "anda" (you)
• Arabic ard (earth) and Dutch aarde (earth)
• Arabic mawt (death) and Latin mors (death)
• Arabic sharif and English sheriff
• Bangla fela (throw away/put down) and English fell (to make something fall)
• Bangla kaata (to cut) and English cut (to sever)
• Bikol aki (child) and Korean agi (child)
• Blackfoot aki (woman) and Even akhi (woman)
• Coptic per (house) and Etruscan pera (house)
• Mandarin Chinese 你 (nǐ) and Tamil நீ (nii) (both meaning you)
• Egyptian kns (vagina) and Latin cunnus (vagina)
• Egyptian mennu (food) and French menu
• Egyptian *marar (to see, to look) and Japanese miru (見る) (to look) and Spanish mirar (to look at, to watch)/Portuguese mirar (to stare)
• English able and Turkish -abil/-ebil (ability infix)
• English "among" and Bisayan "among" (accidentally included)
• English am (first person present tense of to be), Etruscan am (to be), and Sumerian am (to be)
• English and and Indonesian dan
• English aye (yes, affirmative vote) and Japanese hai (はい) (yes) and Cantonese "hai" (yes)
• English boy and Japanese bōya (坊や) (young male child)
• English brush and Texmelucan Zapotec brush
• English bullshit and Mandarin búshì (不是; is not, not true)
• English can and Japanese kan (缶) (cylindrical metal container)
• English cheek and Russian shcheka (щека; cheek)
• English chop and Uzbek chop
• English cut and Vietnamese cắt (to cut)
• English dairy and Russian doyar (дояр; milker), doyarka (milkmaid)
• English day, daily and Spanish día (day) (or Latin dies (day) or even English diary)
• English delete and Russian udalit' (удалить; to delete, remove) [?]
• English dog and Mbabaram dog
• English dork and Russian durak
• English dung and Korean 똥 ttong (excrement)
• English earth and Hebrew erets (אֶרֶץ) (land)
• English egg and Luganda eggi
• English evaporate and Russian ispar'at' (испарять);
• English eye Hebrew ayin/ Arabic "`ain" (eye)
• English great and English grand
• English to have and Portuguese haver (to exist)
• English house and Hungarian ház (house, block of flats) (the Hungarian word has corresponding counterparts in other Uralic languages, like Finnish koti or kota)
• English hut and Russian hata (хата)
• English Indian (native American) and Mescalero Inde (Apache, person)
• English island and isle
• English it, Russian eto(это) and Tagalog eto/ito (it, this)
• English laser and Scottish Gaelic lasair (light beam, flame)
• English male and English female, which come from the Latin masculinus and femella, respectively.
• English man and Latin humanus (people, mankind)
• English mount (short form of "mountain"), and Hawaiian mauna (mountain)
• English much and Spanish mucho
• English mysterious and Hebrew mistori (מִסְתּוֹרִי)
• English name and Japanese namae (name)
• English neck/German Nacken and Spanish nuca and Hungarian nyak
• English pan and Mandarin pan/Vietnamese bàn (pan, shallow plate, table)
• English pen and pencil
• English pear and Korean 배 pay, bae (Korean pear)
• English persecution and Russian presechenie (persecution, suppression, injunction)
• English reason and Russian razum
• English river and Spanish rio
• English seed and Korean 씨 ssi (pip)
• English stone and Mandarin shítou (traditional 石頭, simplified 石头)
• English strange and Russian stranno (странно)
• English stranger and Russian strannik (странник)
• English trawl (to fish by dragging a net) and English troll (to fish by trailing a line)
• English villain and English vile
• English viscosity and Russian vyazkost'
• English why and Korean 왜 wae (what for)
• English yea and Korean 예 ye (yes)
• Estonian/Finnish ei (no, not), Etruscan ei (no, not), and Norwegian ei/Swedish ej (not)
• Estonian mina/Finnish minä (I), and Zulu mina (I)
• Estonian ta (short form of tema) (he/she) and Mandarin tā (他) (he/she)
• Estonian/Finnish ja (and) and Japanese ya (や) (and, used in an incomplete list)
• Estonian sina/Finnish sinä (singular you) and Turkish sen (singular you) (see also: Ural-Altaic languages)
• Etruscan ac (to make, act) and Sumerian ak (to make,act)
• Etruscan an (he/she/it) and Sumerian ane (he/she/it)
• Etruscan ipa (who, which) and Sumerian aba (who)
• Etruscan mi (I/me) and Sumerian ma (I/me) and Korean na (I)
• French qui est-ce? (who is this?) and Hungarian ki ez? (who is this?)
• French caisse (money box) and Tamil kasu (an ancient monetary unit)
• French garou (wolf) and Japanese garō (餓狼) (starving wolf)
• French le (the) and Samoan le (the)
• French lien (link) and Mandarin lián/ Vietnamese liên (link)
• French rue (road) and Mandarin lù (road)
• French papillon (butterfly) and Nahuatl papalotl (butterfly)
• Ga ba (come) and Hebrew ba (בא) (come)
• German Ach, so! and Japanese Aa, soo (ああ、そう) (I see)
• German haben (to have) and Latin habere (to have)
• German Kreuz (cross) and Russian krest (крест; cross)
• Greek thesato and Russian sosat' (сосать; to suck)
• Greek root -lab- and Sanskrit root -labh- (take)
• Hawaiian kahuna (priest) and Hebrew k'hunah (כְּהוּנָה) (priesthood)
• Hawaiian/Maori wahine (woman) and Latin vagina
• Hebrew ari (lion) and Tamil ari (lion)and Khazakh Aristan
• Hebrew derekh (דֶרֶך) (road) and Russian doroga (дорога; road)
• Hebrew "peroth" (פֵּרוֹת) (historically rendered "feroth" following a vowel sound) and English "fruit"
• Hebrew shesh (שׁשׁ) (six) and Persian shesh (six) and Spanish seis (six)
• Icelandic fold (earth, land, ground) and Hungarian föld (earth, soil, land)
• Indonesian dua (two) and Pashto dwa (two) and Korean dul (two) and Mandarin dui/ Vietnamese đôi (pair)
• Indonesian kepala (head) and Greek kephale (head)
• Inuktitut kayak and Turkish kayık and Choco language group cayuca (rowing boat)
• Italian ma (but) and Vietnamese mà (but)
• Italian micio (small cat) and Quechua michi (cat)
• Japanese baba (祖母/ばば) ("grandmother") and Russian baba (grandmother)and Yiddish Bubbe (Grandmother)
• Japanese shiru (知る) (know) and Latin scire (know)
• Japanese gaijin (non-Japanese), Romani gadjo (non-Gypsy), Hebrew and Yiddish goy (non-Jew) - all of them can mean stranger, foreigner
• Kyrgyz ayal (woman) and Parji ayal (woman)
• Korean doki (axe) and Mapuche natives and Easter Island Polynesian toki (axe)
• Korean 난 (nan) and Tamil நான் (naan), both meaning "I"
• Luganda na ('and') and Dutch en (and)
• Polish mieszkanie (apartment) and Hebrew mishkan (מִשׁכָּן) (dwelling)
• Spanish y [i] ('and') and Slavic и/i [i] (and)
• Spanish como (as/like) and Hebrew k'mo (כְּמוֹ) (as/like) and Arabic kma (as/like)
• Minangkabau duo (two) and Latin duo (two)
• English "canteen" and Chinese "cāntīng" (餐厅) (dining room, cafeteria), although Pinyin <c> has the value [ts].
• English "nerdy" and Chuvash "nĕrtte" (awkward, inept)
• Welsh "cwmwl" and Japanese "kumo" (雲) (cloud)

See also

• False friend
• Translation

References

• Jakobson, R. (1962) ‘Why “mama” and “papa”?’ In Jakobson, R. Selected Writings, Vol. I: Phonological Studies, pp. 538–545. The Hague: Mouton.

• Geoff Parkes and Alan Cornell (1992), 'NTC's Dictionary of German False Cognates', National Textbook Company, NTC Publishing Group.

External links

• A list of false cognates