False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

[eldin raigmore]

Like “the ‘hood” for “the neighborhood”.

[k1234567890y]

Japanese Totoro (name of a fictional animal) and Old High German totoro "egg yolk"

Spoiler:

Japanese Totoro:


German Totoro:

[k1234567890y]

English Norse "the collective Scandinavian people" v.s. Swedish nors "smelt(fish)"

[k1234567890y]

sorry for triple posting, but got another one.

Classical Latin Ūranium "a town in Caria" v.s. New Latin uranium "uranium"

It seems that native Latin speakers of Roman era might have problems understanding the Latin language used as a source for modern internationalism.

[eldin raigmore]

English Norse "the collective Scandinavian people" v.s. Swedish nors "smelt(fish)"

Is that a sense-verb with an incorporated object? Like “saw(stars)”?

[Shemtov]

English Norse "the collective Scandinavian people" v.s. Swedish nors "smelt(fish)"

Is that a sense-verb with an incorporated object? Like “saw(stars)”?

Smelt is the name of a kind of fish, which before checking on it, is what I assumed K1234567890Y meant.

[Khemehekis]

A smelt belongs to the same order (Clupeiformes) as the herring, the anchovy, and the pilchard. (I think the menhaden too.) So basically, the sardine order.

[k1234567890y]

English Norse "the collective Scandinavian people" v.s. Swedish nors "smelt(fish)"

Is that a sense-verb with an incorporated object? Like “saw(stars)”?

Smelt is the name of a kind of fish, which before checking on it, is what I assumed K1234567890Y meant.

yeah I was talking about that kind of fish.

[Vlürch]

jak się masz? - how are you?
(Amdo) jəχ sha ma - widow

A bit of a stretch since they'd be used in totally different contexts, but... I'm also not sure if the <sh> of Amdo Tibetan is [sʰ] or [ɕ], probably the former tbh but it's still similar enough that I think it kinda counts as a false friend or at least unfortunate coincidence.

[k1234567890y]

Japanese ゆり (a female given name, often written as 百合) v.s. Russian Юрий (a male given name, cognates with English George)

both of them are pronounced as something similar to /juri/ but Russian Yuris are male, while Japanese Yuris are female.

[k1234567890y]

Chinese 柚子 “pomelo” v.s. Japanese 柚子 “yuzu”

Both of the words indicate a kind of fruit belonging to the genus Citrus, but they actually indicate something different.

[Raginaharjaz]

puszka (a can)
пушка (a cannon)

kawior (caviar)
кавер (a carpet)

dywan (a carpet)
диван (a sofa)

świat (world)
свет (light)

[k1234567890y]

Moroccan Arabic muš “cat” v.s. Polish mysz “mouse”

[Xonen]

świat (world)
свет (light)

I'm not sure if this one really counts as a false friend... The Russian word also means 'world', even if мир is more common for that sense these days. And it's quite certainly not a coincidence: the sense 'world' appears to be fairly transparently derived from 'light', and the Proto-Slavic *světъ already had both of these senses.