False cognate

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The term "false cognate" is sometimes used incorrectly for false friend.

False cognates are a pair 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. Sometimes, words merge, e.g. Finnish piikki seems like a cognate to spike, but when it has the meaning "cusp of a graph", the cognate is peak.

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 māma, 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 Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was papa (the modern word haha "mother" is the descendant of the older word). Furthermore, the modern Japanese word for "father," chichi, is from older titi.

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).

The opposite of a false cognate is an 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.

[edit] Examples

Arabic/Hebrew akh (brother) and Mongolian akh (brother)
Arabic ana (I) and Gondi ana (I)
Arabic anta (you, singular) and Japanese anata / anta (you, singular)
Arabic ard (earth) and Dutch aard (earth)
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 *maRaR (to see, to look), Japanese miru (to look), and Spanish mirar (to look for, to watch)
English am (first person present tense of to be), Etruscan am (to be), and Sumerian am (to be)
English bad and Persian bad
English boy and Japanese bōya (young male child)
English bullshit and Mandarin búshì (不是; isn't, not true)
English can and Japanese kan (cylindrical metal container)
English cheek and Russian scheka (cheek)
English chop and Uzbek chop
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 dung and Korean 똥 ttong (poop)
English earth and Hebrew erets (land)
English evaporate and Russian ispar'at'
English house and Hungarian ház (house, block of flats) (the Hungarian word has corresponding counterparts in other Uralic languages)
English hut and Russian hata
English it, Russian eto and Tagalog eto/ito (it, this)
English laser and Scottish Gaelic lasair (light beam, flame)
English many and Korean 많이 mani (much)
English mount (short form of "mountain"), and Hawaiian mauna (mountain)
English much and Spanish mucho
English neat and Latin nitidus
English pan and Mandarin pan (pan, shallow plate)
English pen and pencil
English pear and Korean 배 pay, bae (Korean pear)
English persecution and Russian presechenie (persecution, suppression, injunction)
English seed and Korean 씨 ssi (pip)
English stone and Mandarin shítou (traditional 石頭, simplified 石头)
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 vagina, and Hawaiian/Maori wahine (woman)
English viscosity and Russian v'azkost'
English why and Korean 왜 wae (what for)
Estonian/Finnish ei (no, not), Etruscan ei (no, not), and Swedish ej (not)
Estonian mina/Finnish minä (I), and Zulu mina (I)
Estonian ta (short form of tema) (he/she) and Mandarin tā (他) (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)
Finnish ja (and) and Japanese ya (and)
French le (the) and Samoan le (the)
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 and Latin Deus (God)
Greek root -lab- and Sanskrit root -labh- (take)
Hawaiian kahuna (priest) and Hebrew kehunah (priesthood)
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)
Inuit kayak and Turkish kaik (rowing boat)
Japanese babā (disrespectful term meaning "old hag") and Russian baba (grandmother)
Kyrgyz ayal (woman) and Parji ayal (woman)
Russian sok (juice) and Latin succus (juice)
Finnish sinä (singular you) and Turkish sen (singular you)