Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-athena.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!mit-athena!jc From: jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: False cognates Message-ID: <277@mit-athena.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Jul-85 13:26:44 EDT Article-I.D.: mit-athe.277 Posted: Mon Jul 1 13:26:44 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 04:37:00 EDT Reply-To: jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers) Distribution: net.nlang Organization: MIT Project Athena Lines: 37 Summary: 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] / ...!harvard