Talk:Heterologue
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[edit] Merger with False Cognate?
Both of the subjects seemed to be closely related. Thoughts? --Ķĩřβȳ♥ŤįɱéØ 00:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
- I don't see any reason to merge them. First, I can't tell from this poorly written article exactly what a heterologue is anyway. All the definition says is "technical term for a different word in two languages". What does that mean? "Peanut" in English and "rigoler" in French are different words in two languages. From the examples, I gather that maybe the words have to be spelled the same, but it isn't certain that that's a requirement.
- Second, the article goes on to say, "The term is relevant when discussing homonyms. Homonyms are by definition heterologues that are both homophones and homographs." It isn't relevant when discussing homophones, because homophones are words that are spelled differently but pronounced the same in one language. The final sentence elaborates on homonyms, and neglects altogether that the topic is supposed to be heterologues. So the article has three sentences: one that doesn't contain the information it's supposed to have, one that's false, and one that's irrelevant.
- Third, a pair of false cognates have the same or similar meanings as each other in addition to bearing a superficial resemblance. The one point that this article does make clear about heterologues is that they have unrelated meanings. So false cognates aren't heterologues, and heterologues aren't false cognates. There's absolutely no reason to merge the articles.
- Finally, as poor as it is, even if it were corrected and clarified, this article on heterologues is nothing more than a dictionary definition. Further, I don't think there's anything more that anyone can say about them: by their nature, they as a group have no common properties about which anything useful could be written. Therefore, I don't think this article belongs in Wikipedia at all. —Largo Plazo 03:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
- I tend to agree with Largo Plazo. That two short, basic words from two different languages have different etymology and meaning, but are spelled or pronounced same or similar, doesn't strike me as particularly interesting. The articles false friend and false cognate are about interesting concepts. I can't see anything interesting about this from a linguistic viewpoint. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 13:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
