jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers) (07/01/85)
The debate over OK and apparently-related words in assorted other
languages (such as Wolof) gives me a golden opportunity to put out
a request for contributions in the form of false cognates. First
a definition: a "False cognate" is a pair of words in two languages
which have nearly-identical pronunciations and meanings, but which
are nevertheless not related (byt borrowing or by common ancestry).
Some examples.
There are some languages in West Africa (I forget for the moment which
ones) which contain a word pronounced much like English "bad", and which
means the same thing. The word is unrelated to the english word; the
similarity is a coincidence.
In Hebrew, the word "hi'" is pronounced the same as the English word "he",
and means "she". This is a coincidence; the languages are not related and
neither one borrowed the word.
There are many languages in which the word for "mother" consists of the "m"
sound plus a low vowel. Many of them are not related. Psycholinguists
have suggested that there is something deep within the human psyche that
wants to call their mother by some term sounding like "ma". This set
of false cognates is the primary piece of evidence. Similarly, the
word for "father" very frequently starts with a stop. It would in English,
but we long ago went through a pronunciation shift that turned "pater" into
"fat[h]er".
Anyone got any more good examples? (Please, try to verify that your examples
really are false cognates, not borrowings!)
--
...!decvax
\
...!mit-eddie!mit-athena!jc [John Chambers @ MIT Project Athena]
/
...!harvardbetsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry) (07/02/85)
Mr. Chambers is using 'false cognate' in a completely different
sense than I was taught it in language class; we used 'false
cognate' to mean "words that look the same but have different
meanings." The classic pair in spanish/english is
embarazada/embarrassed.
Unfortunately, embarazada means pregnant; it's the classic female
foreign-student gaffe.
Does anybody know what the correct description for this sort of pair is,
if it isn't 'false cognate'?
Thanks.
--
Elizabeth Hanes Perry
UUCP: {decvax |ihnp4 | linus| cornell}!dartvax!betsy
CSNET: betsy@dartmouth
ARPA: betsy%dartmouth@csnet-relay
"Ooh, ick!" -- Penfoldbob@cadovax.UUCP (Bob "Kat" Kaplan) (07/03/85)
In article <277@mit-athena.UUCP> jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers) writes: >There are many languages in which the word for "mother" consists of the "m" >sound plus a low vowel. Many of them are not related. Psycholinguists >have suggested that there is something deep within the human psyche that >wants to call their mother by some term sounding like "ma". Some phonologists have suggested that the "ma" sound is very easy for a child to utter, and for that reason one of the child's first words will usually be "ma" regardless of the linguistic community the child is born into. -- Bob Kaplan "Ilo Shaka. I Olimo Shando. Shanda Lamoshi Kando. Hopa Bia Shata Mahanda."
aeb@mcvax.UUCP (Andries Brouwer) (07/05/85)
In article <277@mit-athena.UUCP> jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers) writes: >There are some languages in West Africa (I forget for the moment which >ones) which contain a word pronounced much like English "bad", and which >means the same thing. You are referring to Persian. What about the Danish kalde 'to call' ? (The 'd' is not pronounced, but the vowels are not the same.)
aeb@mcvax.UUCP (Andries Brouwer) (07/06/85)
In article <736@mcvax.UUCP> I wrote > What about the Danish kalde 'to call' ? I was interrupted, and ended up saying almost the opposite of what I intended to say. The false etymology is not that the English "call" and the Danish "kalde" are unrelated, but that these related germanic words are unrelated to that Latin "calare" 'to call out' and the Greek kaleo 'to call, to convoke'. [In fact a cognate of these latter words exists in English: "to low" 'to moo' (sound production of cows) - the Latin c- becomes h- in germanic, as in old English "hlowan" > modern English "to low". Dutch has "loeien". German has "hallen" 'to (re)sound'.] { Don't flame if your favorite etymological dictionary says otherwise; I have correspondences in dozens of languages to show that e.g. Partridge is wrong when he says "to low - clearly echoic" and "to call - the relationship to Latin calare is obscure but extremely probable". } Having made clear what I wanted to say in the previous note, let me add another common (in Holland) false etymology. Dutch has "woud" 'forest, wood', but "woud" and "wood" are unrelated. In fact "woud" belongs to the family of German "Wald" and English "wold" (with slightly different meaning), just like Dutch "oud" corresponds to German "alt" and English "old". On the other hand, the English "wood" is related to the Danish "ved" 'timber'.
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (07/06/85)
Sorry if this is not of general interest. I tried a direct reply, but it
didn't get through.
550 sdcsvax... User unknown
This isn't exactly on your false cognates question, but on the
mother/father generalization. I think R. Jakobsen gets the credit
for suggesting it, before there even were any psycholinguists.
In any case, Georgian provides a wonderful exception. They have
`mama' meaning father and `deda' meaning mother!
--
-- Mitch Marks @ UChicago
...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmarsimon@psuvax1.UUCP (Janos Simon) (07/06/85)
This is just a curiosity - I am not a linguist and have no idea of etymologies. In Portuguese, the imperative of the verb "puxar" (to pull) is "puxe" (the x is pronounced as sh, u as oo, the e is short). As a result, Brazililians in English-speaking countries have difficulties with doors marked "push". js
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (07/07/85)
> > on the > mother/father generalization. I think R. Jakobsen gets the credit > for suggesting it, before there even were any psycholinguists. > In any case, Georgian provides a wonderful exception. They have > `mama' meaning father and `deda' meaning mother! > > > -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago > ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar I don't excacly remember the title, but it had three parts, something, Aphasia, and Phonlological Universials. Or something like that. Anyway, he did not say that "mama" was necessarily a likely universal for "mother", but rather that speech develops from sucking and that the low back vowels, the bi-labials and the dentals are easier to make than the high front vowels, affricates, fricatives, and velar or glottal sounds. Jackobson reasoned that the first sounds a child makes would be like: ma ta da pa ba na note that the "words" are usually duplicated (hmm, that's interesting). mama tata dada papa baba nana These words attach themselves to the people closest to the baby. Thus, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, brothers, sisters, and so on wind up with those names. According to the theory in one culture a mama could be a tata and a dada a mama. I like the theory, because those words do seem to be universially used, especially if you add mid-vowels. Perhaps Jackobson did, and I forgot. scc!steiny Don Steiny - Don Steiny Software 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382
strickln@ihlpa.UUCP (stricklen) (07/10/85)
How about the word gift, which in German means poison. Steve Stricklen AT&T Bell Labs
grass@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA (07/10/85)
>How about the word gift, which in German means poison. > Steve Stricklen Yeah, and there is a French candy bar called "Gift" that I saw in a train station vending machine on the German border. Hmm. One of those with a nice bottle of "Pschitt" soft drink (another nice French brand name). Real tasty. - Judy Grass, University of Illinois - Urbana {ihnp4,pur-ee,convex}!uiucdcs!grass grass%uiuc.arpa
neal@druny.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett) (07/10/85)
Esperanto also has a nice selection of "falsaj amikoj" (false friends). My favorite is the root "adult", which means "adulterate". Others indicate interesting shifts of meaning in English: "fabrik" means "factory", and indeed the root of "fabric" is L. fabrica: workshop. "pest" means "plague", and I just learned that that is also one of the meanings of the English word. Now we more often use "pestilence" for this meaning. I have learned a lot of interesting word derivations by studying Esperanto, and I highly recommend it to people that enjoy puzzles or want to combine the practical benefits of travel with the intellectual benefits of a broader knowledge of word origins. -Neal McBurnett, ihnp4!druny!neal, 303-538-4852
rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) (07/11/85)
In article <3318@dartvax.UUCP> betsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry) writes: >Mr. Chambers is using 'false cognate' in a completely different >sense than I was taught it in language class; we used 'false >cognate' to mean "words that look the same but have different >meanings." The classic pair in spanish/english is >embarazada/embarrassed. > >Unfortunately, embarazada means pregnant; it's the classic female >foreign-student gaffe. > >Does anybody know what the correct description for this sort of pair is, >if it isn't 'false cognate'? > When I took French, it was called 'faux ami' ('false friend'). Two words are "cognate" if they are related; they need not have retained the same or similar meaning. Does "false cognate" mean they appear to be cognate but aren't, or does it mean because they appear to be cognate we are misled to think they have the same meaning? I think we have two issues at hand: 1. Two words in two different languages may appear to be cognate, but aren't. Can't think of a good example right now; I usually marvel at cases of the opposite, where two words do not at all appear related but are. 2. Two words in two different languages are cognate but have different meanings. -- +--------------+-------------------------------+ | Rob Bernardo | Pacific Bell | +--------------+ 2600 Camino Ramon, Room 4E700 | | 415-823-2417 | San Ramon, California 94583 | +--------------+-------------------------------+---------+ | ihnp4!ptsfa!rob | | {nsc,ucbvax,decwrl,amd,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!rob | +--------------------------------------------------------+
mlf@panda.UUCP (Matt L. Fichtenbaum) (07/11/85)
>How about the word gift, which in German means poison.
Even better, in Swedish, "gift" as a noun means "poison," as
an adjective, "married."
--
Matt Fichtenbaum
"When marriage is outlawed,
only outlaws will have inlaws."barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (07/16/85)
Japanese has "enpitsu" (pencil) which is not related to pencil at all. The morphemes (and ideographs) add up to lead-brush. Japanese also has a number of loan words from English which are not immediately obvious without study. Like "rabu" (love). (Well, the language doesn't have an L so that makes it "rove"; it doesn't have the vowel /uh/, only ah, ee, oo, e, and oh--of which the closest to /uh/ is ah so that makes it "rahb"; and it doesn't have V or non-nasal consonants as syllable terminators so that makes it "rabu." --Lee Gold
levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) (07/20/85)
From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) Subject: Re: False cognates: > >Japanese also has a number of loan words from English which are not >immediately obvious without study. Like "rabu" (love). (Well, the > >--Lee Gold > It seems surprising that a word for such a basic concept as love in a language as old as Japanese is claimed to be borrowed from the much newer language English. How could that come to be? Does "rabu" stand for any particular kind of love? I presume that there are many ways of saying "love" in Jap- anese other than "rabu" -- or are there? (I don't have a handy Japanese guru.) Can anybody clear up the mystery? Dan Levy AT&T CSD (formerly Teletype) ..!ihnp4!ttrdc!levy
judith@proper.UUCP (Judith Abrahms) (08/06/85)
About the Japanese "rabu" (Eng. "love"). Surely they already had their own word or words for love before they borrowed that one? Does anyone know what distinctive flavor "rabu" would have for a speaker of Japanese? (For instance, when America was discovering France in the '40s, everyone knew what you meant when you cried, Ooh, l'amour!!!) Perhaps the word "rabu" contains within it some notion of the American notion of love.
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (08/08/85)
In article <181@proper.UUCP> judith@proper.UUCP (judith) writes: >About the Japanese "rabu" (Eng. "love"). Surely they already had their own >word or words for love before they borrowed that one? Does anyone know what >distinctive flavor "rabu" would have for a speaker of Japanese? (For instance, >when America was discovering France in the '40s, everyone knew what you meant >when you cried, Ooh, l'amour!!!) Perhaps the word "rabu" contains within it >some notion of the American notion of love. Well, the answer is actually fairly simple, English is "in vogue" in Japan. It is the "in" thing to stick as many English words into a conversation as possible! I have watched some untranslated Japanese cartoons, and it is amazing how many English words show up! (I would wish for even more since I do not know Japanese:-)). So using words like "rabu" is simply being fashionable! -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) {trwrb|allegra|cbosgd|hplabs|ihnp4|aero!uscvax!akgua}!sdcrdcf!psivax!friesen or {ttdica|quad1|bellcore|scgvaxd}!psivax!friesen