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False cognate
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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. Note that even false cognates may have an indirect connection between them, even if they lack a common root.
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).
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Encyclopedia
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. Note that even false cognates may have an indirect connection between them, even if they lack a common root.
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.
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 mama, 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, is from older titi. In fact, in Japanese the child's initial mamma 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've 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, some of these examples would indeed be distantly related cognates, but the evidence for reclassifying them as such is insufficient. The Nostratic hypothesis is however based on the comparative method, unlike some other superfamily hypotheses.
Examples
- Arabic/Hebrew akh (brother) and Mongolian akh (brother)
- Arabic ana (I) and Gondi ana (I)
- Arabic anta (you, masculine singular) and Japanese anata / anta (you, singular) and Malay "anda" (you)
- Arabic ard (earth) and Dutch aard (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)
- Egyptian kns (vagina) and Latin cunnus (vagina)
- Egyptian mennu (food) and French menu
- Egyptian *maRaR (to see, to look) and Japanese miru (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 (yes) and Cantonese "hai" (yes)
- English boy and Japanese boya (young male child)
- English bullshit and Mandarin búshì (??; is not, not true)
- English can and Japanese kan (cylindrical metal container)
- English cheek and Russian shcheka (????; cheek)
- English chop and Uzbek chop
- English cut and Vietnamese c?t (to cut)
- English dairy and Russian doyar (????; milker), doyarka (milkmaid)
- English day, daily and Spanish día (day) (or Latin dies (day) or even English diary)
- English delete and Russian udalit (???????; to delete, remove) [?]
- English dog and Mbabaram dog
- English dork and Russian durak
- English dung and Korean ttong (excrement)
- English earth and Hebrew erets (land)
- English egg and Luganda eggi
- English evaporate and Russian ispar'at' (????????);
- English eye and Hebrew ayin (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
- English island and isle
- English it, Russian eto(???) and Tagalog eto/ito (it, this)
- English laser and Scottish Gaelic lasair (light beam, flame)
- English man and Latin humanus (people, mankind)
- English mount (short form of "mountain"), and Hawaiian mauna (mountain)
- English much and Spanish mucho
- English neck/German Nacken and Spanish nuca and Hungarian nyak
- English pan and Mandarin pan (pan, shallow plate)
- English pen and pencil
- English pear and Korean 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 ssi (pip)
- English stone and Mandarin shítou (traditional ??, simplified ??)
- English strange and Russian stranno(???????)
- English stranger and Russian strannik(????????)
- 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 v'azkost
- English why and Korean wae (what for)
- English yea and Korean 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 ta (he/she)
- 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)
- Finnish ja (and) and Japanese ya (and)
- Finnish sinä (singular you) and Turkish sen (singular you) (see also: Ural-Altaic languages)
- French garou (wolf) and Japanese garo (hungry 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 (come)
- German Ach, so! and Japanese A‘, soo (I see)
- German haben (to have) and Latin habere (to have)
- German Kreuz (cross) and Russian krest (?????; cross)
- Greek thesato and Russian sosat (??????; to suck)
- Greek theos (god) and Latin deus (god)
- Greek theos (god) and Greek Zeus (the king of all gods)
- Greek root -lab- and Sanskrit root -labh- (take)
- Hawaiian kahuna (priest) and Hebrew kehunah (priesthood)
- Hawaiian/Maori wahine (woman) and Latin vagina
- Hebrew ari (lion) and Tamil ari (lion)
- Hebrew dereh (road) and Russian doroga (??????; road)
- Hebrew shesh (six) and Persian shesh (six)
- Indonesian dua (two) and Pashto dwa (two) and Korean dul (two) and Mandarin dui/ Vietnamese doi (pair)
- Inuktitut kayak and Turkish kayik and Choco language group cayuca (rowing boat)
- Italian micio (small cat) and Quechua michi (cat)
- Japanese arigato and Portuguese obrigado (thank you)
- Japanese baba (disrespectful term meaning "old hag") and Russian baba (grandmother)
- Japanese shiru (know) and Latin scire (know)
- Kyrgyz ayal (woman) and Parji ayal (woman)
- Korean doki (axe) and Mapuche natives and Easter Island Polynesian toki (axe)
- Luganda na ('and') and Dutch en (and)
- Spanish y [i] ('and') and Serbian ?/i [i] (and)
- Spanish carpeta [i] ('folder') and English carpet [i] (carpet)
- English "name" and Malay "nama" (name) and Japanese "namae" (name)
- English "canteen" and Chinese "canting" (dining room, cafeteria)
- English "nerdy" and Chuvash "nertte" (awkward, inept)
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