False cognates

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Khemehekis
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Re: False cognates

Post by Khemehekis »

ɶʙ ɞʛ wrote: 15 Apr 2021 05:51 Of course, any "cognate" between a natlang and an a priori conlang is guaranteed to be false.
Fixed that for you.
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All4Ɇn
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Re: False cognates

Post by All4Ɇn »

:lat: grandō "hail" & :ita: grandine "hail"
:esp: :por: granizo "hail"

Although it's not entirely sure where the Spanish word comes from, it's phonetically difficult for granizo to be derived from the Latin and is most likely a combination of the word grano (grain) and the suffix -izo. The evolution of this term into meaning hail may be due to influence from the Latin though. The Portuguese use of the word is a direct borrowing from Spanish.
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Re: False cognates

Post by All4Ɇn »

:isr: מַצָּה matzo "matzo" vs. :ell: μᾶζᾰ mâza "barley bread"
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k1234567890y
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Re: False cognates

Post by k1234567890y »

Latin Gallia "Gaul" v.s. French Gaule "Gaul"
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
Salmoneus
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Re: False cognates

Post by Salmoneus »

k1234567890y wrote: 12 Jun 2021 03:51 Latin Gallia "Gaul" v.s. French Gaule "Gaul"
Fucking hell.

And to add to that:

Irish/English: Gall vs Gaul vs Gael.

'gall' is an Irish word for a foreigner; with the capital letter, a 'Gall' is usually specifically a Dane or an Englishman, the two groups of people the Irish believed lived in France. It's related to Latin 'Gallia', but not to 'Gaul'. It's also (rarely) found as a word in English, in Irish-adjacent and historical writing, in the context of the perennial racial conflict between the 'Galls' and the 'Gaels'.

'Gael', however, despite appearances, is completely unrelated.

This means that a "Gall", a "Gael" and a "Gaul" all 'originally' described a Celtic-speaking person living in France, but all three are (suppposedly) unrelated!

To add to the confusion, the Scottish Gaelic reflex of 'Gaelic' is pronounced by the Irish as though it were derived from 'Gall', not from 'Gael' (i.e. with ga:l (it's meant to be ka:l with an unaspirated but voiced stop, but who's going to bother about that if your own language doesn't have such things...)).
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k1234567890y
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Re: False cognates

Post by k1234567890y »

Salmoneus wrote: 12 Jun 2021 23:28
k1234567890y wrote: 12 Jun 2021 03:51 Latin Gallia "Gaul" v.s. French Gaule "Gaul"
Fucking hell.

And to add to that:

Irish/English: Gall vs Gaul vs Gael.

'gall' is an Irish word for a foreigner; with the capital letter, a 'Gall' is usually specifically a Dane or an Englishman, the two groups of people the Irish believed lived in France. It's related to Latin 'Gallia', but not to 'Gaul'. It's also (rarely) found as a word in English, in Irish-adjacent and historical writing, in the context of the perennial racial conflict between the 'Galls' and the 'Gaels'.

'Gael', however, despite appearances, is completely unrelated.

This means that a "Gall", a "Gael" and a "Gaul" all 'originally' described a Celtic-speaking person living in France, but all three are (suppposedly) unrelated!

To add to the confusion, the Scottish Gaelic reflex of 'Gaelic' is pronounced by the Irish as though it were derived from 'Gall', not from 'Gael' (i.e. with ga:l (it's meant to be ka:l with an unaspirated but voiced stop, but who's going to bother about that if your own language doesn't have such things...)).
wow and thanks for telling

Maybe the Irish pronounciation could be due to some forms of folk etymology that such words are cognates?
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Salmoneus »

It's actually regular. The Scottish is /ka:lik/, and the Irish is (AIUI) /ga:lik/ just because the aspiration contrast is interpreted as a voicing contrast. I assume the Scottish is regular-ish, although it's kind of weird that Gàidhlig has such a different vowel (/a:/) from Gàidheal (/E:@l/), so I don't know.

Oh, and in Gàidhlig, 'gall' is pronounced /kaul/. I assume it may also have the diphthong (so, /gaul/) in some Irish dialects? But still not related to 'Gaul'...
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Re: False cognates

Post by Sequor »

Hindi bher, Malay-Indonesian biri-biri 'sheep'
Norwegian/Swedish/Danish får 'sheep'
Last edited by Sequor on 02 Sep 2022 22:38, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: False cognates

Post by qwed117 »

:nld: Papiamentu: kashi 'closet, cupboard' from Dutch 'kastje' / :esp: Catalan: caixa 'box' from Latin 'capsa' / :eng: English: chest from Latin 'cista'.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Salmoneus »

Giving the more startling same language pair: Kasten (crate, box, case) vs Kiste (chest, box) [german]
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ixals
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Re: False cognates

Post by ixals »

I guess the definitions make it obvious that they're not cognates but I always liked how Kuppel 'dome' is not cognate with kuppeln 'to clutch, to connect' and Kupplung 'clutch, socket', their variants koppeln and Kopplung (who are all cognate to Koppel 'paddock' instead). Kuppel however is cognate to Kübel 'bucket'.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: False cognates

Post by eldin raigmore »

qwed117 wrote: 14 Jun 2021 05:11 :nld: Papiamentu: kashi 'closet, cupboard' from Dutch 'kastje' / :esp: Catalan: caixa 'box' from Latin 'capsa' / :eng: English: chest from Latin 'cista'.
Does this have anything to do with why Kashi Go Lean tastes like a cardboard box?
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Re: False cognates

Post by k1234567890y »

Japanese なこま/猫 /ne̞ko̞ma̠/ "cat(archaic form)" v.s. Bambara jakuma "cat"
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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VaptuantaDoi
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Re: False cognates

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

English pen and pencil. pen is actually cognate to feather, fathom and impetus; while pencil is related to penis and penicillin.
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k1234567890y
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Re: False cognates

Post by k1234567890y »

Romanian grămadă "mass, heap, pile, multitude, lot of something" v.s. Portuguese gramado "lawn"
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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aliensdrinktea
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Re: False cognates

Post by aliensdrinktea »

VaptuantaDoi wrote: 04 Jul 2021 04:08 pen is actually cognate to feather, fathom and impetus
Wait, what?
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Re: False cognates

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

aliensdrinktea wrote: 08 Aug 2021 04:09
VaptuantaDoi wrote: 04 Jul 2021 04:08 pen is actually cognate to feather, fathom and impetus
Wait, what?
Pen (in the sense of "writing implement") is ulimately from Latin penna “feather”, from PIE *péth₂r̥ ~ pth₂én- “feather, wing”; which also gave proto-Germanic *feþrō, English feather. *péth₂r̥ ~ pth₂én- itself is from the root *péth₂- “to spread out”, which gives PGC *faþmaz “outstretched arms” > fathom. This also gives PIE *péth₂eti “fall”, from which Latin petō “fall upon” and thence impetus. Here's a list of all the English descendants I could find:

Spoiler:
pen (through Old French)
petal (through Greek); from this you get at least 45 derived terms according to Wiktionary
fathom (giving fathomable, fathometer, fathomless, unfathomable)
passage (through Old French)
patent (through Latin)
patera (through Latin)
pas, pace and passus (through Latin and French)
impetus (through Latin)
appetent, compete, competition, competitor, perpetual, perpetuity, perpetuate, propitious, petulant, petition, repeat, repetition (all ultimately from Latin petere)
hippopotamus, potamal, potamic, potamology, potamophilous, potamophobia, potamoplankton (from Greek ποταμός)
ptosis, ptomaine, ptilochronological, ptilochronology, ptilolite, ptilopaedic and the suffix -ptile with the sense of "leaf, plumage" (from miscellaneous Greek words)
anything with pter in it, such as helicopter, archaeopteryx (through Greek πτέρυξ
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Re: False cognates

Post by Vlürch »

:jpn: ちょっと (chotto) - a little
:rus: чуток (chutok) - a little

Not that they're that similar, but...
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Xonen
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Re: False cognates

Post by Xonen »

Randomly stumbled upon this:

Hawaiian 'tree'
Livonian 'tree' (and likewise in other Finnic languages, but spelled puu)

Another obvious Finno-Polynesian cognate is of course:

Māori mana 'mana'
Finnish mana 'the hereafter', 'underworld', 'death'; 'mana'
Finnish manata 'to conjure'; 'to exorcize'; 'to curse', 'to jinx'

Now, Finnish mana 'mana' is obviously a recent loan from English (which in turn got it from Māori), but the homonymous word for the realm of the dead is much older and of unknown origin (possibly a backformation from manala, assuming that's originally a shortening of maan ala 'that which lies beneath the earth' reanalyzed as mana-la 'place of mana', but this is far from certain). The verb manata, in turn, might simply be a denominal verb derived from the noun - but it might also be from a different Proto-Uralic root, or a loanword from Proto-Germanic.
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Re: False cognates

Post by Pabappa »

English fry and French frai are apparently unrelated .... both have a variety of senses, but one shared sense between the two words is fish spawn, as in "small fry".
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