False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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Salmoneus
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Salmoneus »

Where does 'ni' come from!?
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Aevas
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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Salmoneus wrote: 29 Apr 2020 22:40 Where does 'ni' come from!?
It comes from -en I, where the consonant of the verb ending has been reanalyzed onto the pronoun. I comes from older īʀ. The verbal ending is from Old Swedish -in and of unclear origin (West Norse has expected -ið), but possible related to the 3p subjunctive.

On a related note, Esperanto has ni, vi for the exact opposite pronouns...
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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:hrv: <Jesu> "be.3P.PLR" :deu: <Jesu> "genitive and dative of Jesus"
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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Portuguese(/Iberian and Neapolitan) o 'DEF.ART.MASC' and Romanian o 'INDF.ART.FEM' have been causing me some annoyance recently... I see a sequence like Rom. o casă 'a house' and I immediately want to parse it as definite. By extension I guess Portuguese a 'DEF.ART.FEM' also adds to this, because it reinforces the connection between definiteness and a single vowel placed before the word.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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Aszev wrote: 12 May 2020 19:18 Portuguese(/Iberian and Neapolitan) o 'DEF.ART.MASC' and Romanian o 'INDF.ART.FEM' have been causing me some annoyance recently... I see a sequence like Rom. o casă 'a house' and I immediately want to parse it as definite. By extension I guess Portuguese a 'DEF.ART.FEM' also adds to this, because it reinforces the connection between definiteness and a single vowel placed before the word.
I recall initially being a bit thrown off by a being a definite article in Hungarian, when it's an indefinite one in English... But the fact that Hungarian and English are so utterly dissimilar otherwise does help; it's got to be worse between two Romance languages.


In the False cognate thread, GrandPiano wrote: 26 May 2020 05:58 :es-pv: sei "six"
:ita: sei "six", :esp: :por: seis "six"
There's also Livonian seis 'seven', but I suppose it's not really a false cognate as much as it's one of these.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Shemtov »

:alb: <ata> 3P.PLR.MASC :isr: /ata/ 2P.SING.MASC
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by All4Ɇn »

Shemtov wrote: 25 Jun 2020 01:45 :alb: <ata> 3P.PLR.MASC :isr: /ata/ 2P.SING.MASC
Given that we're dealing with Albanian, you could tell me they were actually cognates and I would probably buy it
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Shemtov »

If initialisms count.....
:eng: IPA "International Phonetic Alphabet" "Indian Pale Ale" :idn: "IPA" Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam "Natural Science Studies"
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Xonen »

Shemtov wrote: 28 Jul 2020 01:55 If initialisms count.....
I'd say that's moving quite far from the original purpose of this thread, so at the very least, I'd recommend starting a new thread for them. Personally, I'm also inclined to think that of course any two- or three-letter abbreviation is going to have multiple uses, even within one language, so these tend not to be particularly interesting... But I guess that might be a matter of taste.

That being said, some of these can of course be at least somewhat amusing; IPA specifically seems to be a fairly fequent source of humor among linguists.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Shemtov »

Xonen wrote: 28 Jul 2020 13:27
Shemtov wrote: 28 Jul 2020 01:55 If initialisms count.....
I'd say that's moving quite far from the original purpose of this thread, so at the very least, I'd recommend starting a new thread for them. Personally, I'm also inclined to think that of course any two- or three-letter abbreviation is going to have multiple uses, even within one language, so these tend not to be particularly interesting... But I guess that might be a matter of taste.

That being said, some of these can of course be at least somewhat amusing; IPA specifically seems to be a fairly fequent source of humor among linguists.
See, I was looking at some Indonesian, at it was talking about how someone is studying IPA (Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam), and my linguistic-oriented brain went to "Oh, they're studying phonology."
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by GrandPiano »

Not sure if this has been posted here before, but:

:esp: si "if"
:esp: se (third-person reflexive pronoun)

:ita: se "if"
:ita: si (third-person reflexive pronoun)
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Shemtov »

:eng: <ask> vs. :dan: :nor: :swe: <ask> "Ash tree" and the :swe: also means "box (container)"
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by k1234567890y »

Egerius v.s. Hungarian egér "mouse"

and Egerius seems to like rodents a lot.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Khemehekis »

k1234567890y wrote: 29 Aug 2020 11:32 Egerius v.s. Hungarian egér "mouse"

and Egerius seems to like rodents a lot.
Interesting! Maybe Egerius was aware of that, and derived his screenname from egér?
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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:eng: salve n - balm
:fra: salve nf - salvo
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Vlürch »

Here's one that could potentially lead to a bruh moment:

:eng: incel
:tur: incel! - lose weight!

Not that it'd ever be polite to just command people to lose weight, and of course it's something even already anorexic women hear much more than even the fattest incel, and it's worse than calling someone an incel... still, I think these two words being written identically qualifies as an unfortunate coincidence.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by WeepingElf »

False friends exist even between different places speaking the same language, as the following German example shows:

Berlin Kiez 'neighbourhood' vs. Hamburg Kiez 'demimonde, organized crime'
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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Well, coming from near Hamburg, Kiez specifically refers to the area around Reeperbahn, a neighbour associated with organized crime and prostitution. It is more like a proper name of the place. Like the Viertel in Bremen IIRC.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by WeepingElf »

Creyeditor wrote: 10 Oct 2020 16:39 Well, coming from near Hamburg, Kiez specifically refers to the area around Reeperbahn, a neighbour associated with organized crime and prostitution. It is more like a proper name of the place. Like the Viertel in Bremen IIRC.
I see. AFAIK, the Berlin usage is indeed older, originating in a Slavic word for 'village' or something like that. So the word spread in the meaning of 'neighbourhood' to Hamburg, where it was soon narrowed to a particular neighbourhood and shifted its meaning.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Creyeditor »

That makes a lot of sense.
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