Back شقيقة غير حقيقية (لسانيات) Arabic Falsu cognáu AST Falso cognado Spanish Kata kerabat palsu ID 欺瞞的同根語 Japanese 가짜동족어 Korean Verbum falsum cognatum Latin Valse cognaat Dutch Uekte kognat NN Falska kognater Swedish

False cognate

Not to be confused with False friend.

False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family.[1] For example, the English word dog and the Mbabaram word dog have exactly the same meaning and very similar pronunciations, but by complete coincidence. Likewise, English much and Spanish mucho came by their similar meanings via completely different Proto-Indo-European roots, and same for English have and Spanish haber. This is different from false friends, which are similar-sounding words with different meanings, and may or may not be cognates.

Even though false cognates lack a common root, there may still be an indirect connection between them (for example by phono-semantic matching or folk etymology).

  1. ^ Moss (1992), p. ?.

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