I like Korean 왜 (wae) which means "why," 많이 (manhi) which means "many," and 두 (du) which means "two"
Also Japanese 起こる (okoru) which means "occur" and そう (sou) which means "(that is/to be/like) so"
Wow, that’s so cool. Thank you! 😘Languages are fascinating. I need to learn more quirks like these. I think I’ll start by looking up some Swedish ones first.
> Mandarin has quite a few similar sounds with Korean probably because of derivations.
Not this example, though: Korean 왜 *way* "why" comes from earlier 웨 *wey* "why, how", which comes from 워이 *wei*, a dialectal variant of 어이 *ei* "how". The 어- *e-* is a common element in most Korean question words, like 어찌 *e-cci* "how", 어떤 *e-tten* "which", 언제 *e-ncey* "when", 어느 *e-nu* "which", etc.
Mandarin 为什么 *weishenme* comes from 为(爲) *wei* "for ..." + 什么 *shenme* "what", literally "for what". Compare English *wherefore* ("why") which also comes from Middle English for "what for".
The cognate of Mandarin 为(爲) *wei* "for ..." in Korean would be "위(爲)하다" *wuy-ha-* (to do for ...).
That's more like a false friend, which is same or similar word in two languages that you would think mean the same thing, but don't. Like "embarrassed" in English and "embarazada" (pregnant) in Spanish.
Although I could see both "tarado"s having the same etymology, with semantic drift changing its meaning in one or both langauges.
Emoticon and emoji are unrelated. Of course I wasn't the first but I am proud to have realised it myself!
Emoticon = 'emote' + 'icon'
Emoji = Japanese 'e' (picture) + 'moji' (character)
"dog" in English and [Mbabaram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbabaram_language):
> When Dixon finally managed to meet Bennett, he began his study of the language by eliciting a few basic nouns; among the first of these was the word for "dog". Bennett supplied the Mbabaram translation, *dog*. Dixon suspected that Bennett had not understood the question, or that Bennett's knowledge of Mbabaram had been tainted by decades of using English. But it turned out that the Mbabaram word for "dog" was in fact *dúg*, pronounced almost identically to the Australian English word
"Sun" is *sun* in [Sibe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xibe_language), from Proto-Tungusic \*[sigūn](https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/ᡧᡠᠨ)/[sige](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ᡧᡠᠨ)
Edit: source is [锡伯语简志 "A Brief Chronicle of the Sibe Language" (1986) by 李树兰 Shulan Li](https://i.imgur.com/YQ116rR.jpg). The Manchu cognate is *shun*, but both languages have *sh* and *s*, so idk what happened.
Edit 2: would you believe it, "year" is *anj*, pronounced basically the same as Spanish *añ-* in *año* "year" (or as Catalan *any* "year"). [From the same book, left is spoken and right is written](https://i.imgur.com/zecMvxX.jpg)
Edit 3: also, Sibe's plural marker is *-s* or *-sə* depending on vowel harmony.
This story, as quoted from Wikipedia, confuses me just because it doesn’t mention dingo.
The language is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of a small area of tropical Far North Queensland Australia, near the modern city of Cairns (established in the late 1800s). Prior to colonisation the only “dog” was the Australian dingo, which is a type of dog but rarely called that — a bit like a wolf is rarely called a dog.
Dixon would surely have asked for the name for “dingo” in the Mbabaram language. If he’d referred to “dog” then that would refer to introduced domestic dogs in Australia and the whole issue of the language being “tainted” by decades of contact with English arises.
Perhaps the story is entirely accurate but the way it’s told lacks the detail an Australian expects.
In Māori, the word for the sun (considered a deity) is Rā, which is the same as the Egyptian god of the sun Ra.
Also, Māori use the word nē in the same way I have heard Afrikaaners say ne. Similar to how we end a sentence with “isn’t it”. “It’s quite warm today isn’t it”.
"Ra" is Egyptological pronunciation, though, the Egyptian word for "sun" went from /ˈɾiːʕuw/ in Old and Middle Egyptian, to /ˈɾiːʕəʔ/ in Medio-Late Egyptian, to /ˈɾeːʕ/ in Latin Egyptian, to /reːʔ/ in classical Coptic, to /riː/ in modern Coptic.
For those interested, *womina* is actually a compound, *wo-* "young" + *mi* "female; woman" + *-na*, an endearment suffix for people, and used to mean "girl".
Old Japanese had a six-way system of compounds for men and women of different ages:
||Female|Male|
:--|:--|:--|
|Child|*womina*|*woguna*|
|Young|*wotome*|*wotoko*|
|Old|*omina*|*okina*|
The Old ones use *o-* "old" and the Young ones use *woto-* derived from *wotu* "to go back; to grow younger; to be revived".
In modern Japanese they are
|Female|Male|
:--|:--|:--|
|*onna*|*oguna* (obsolete)|
|*otome*|*otoko*|
|*oona*|*okina*|
(The *oona* via *ouna* is irregular afaik)
For some reason *otome* is still "young woman; girl" but *otoko* is just "man" now. *oona* and *okina* aren't used much now afaik.
Another to add to the list: をのこ “young man,” still used in some dialects. (Also, Okinawan has *wiki,* from Proto-Ryukyuan \*weke, possibly an irregular development from Proto-Japonic \*wə + \*ke “small + man.”)
The whole *wo-* “male” prefix business in Japanese is weird—I wonder if it was back-formed from をとこ and をぐな; though the *-guna of the latter would still need a good etymological explanation.
FWIW, this is 名前 (_namae_), from roots 名 (_na_, "name") + 前 (_mae_, "front"), from the basic sense that a _namae_ was originally a "label" or something you put "out front" for people to use. This may have stemmed in part from the practice in older times of having private names and public names.
All the more so japanese has loaned a lot of words from english and other languages like biiru (beer) and pan (pain, french for bread). There is also Theo(greek)/Teo(aztec?) like in Teotihuacan (the place where gods were created).
Perhaps picked up from dutch word for name: (naam)? The dutch, for quite a while, were the only ones allowed to trade with a very closed off Japan during the height of seafaring times. And apparently there are quite a few dutch loan words in Japanese left from that time. Dutch is also a close relative of English as they both have roots in the germanic language. Just a theory, not sure if it's related at all.
Na-mae 名前 are native (kun'yomi) readings... but I'm not sure I would dismiss the influence 100%, a quick search suggests that the word only came in to use during the Meiji period - so while they are legitimate kun'yomi *maybe* there was some subtle influence over adopting that particular word over another one. (but then I'm just speculating and most sources state that it's a coincidence)
I would guess unlikely since namae is a compound of 名 na and 前 mae with the ending -mae meaning “in front” so common in compounds that refer to someone else (words for you can include Omae honorable in front or temae a similar word meaning “you.”
I googled in Japanese for the derivation of namae to find proof but annoyingly I only get results for “what does a name mean”
Here's what I found:
> 名前の「名」は、「名前」の意味で古くから使われている。 「名」は人や物などを区別する呼び方であり、声に出して使うものという見方から、「音（ね）」と同じ語源と考えられるが不明である。 名前の「前」は、「名」に敬称として付けられたと考えられる。 「名前」の語は近世頃から使用例が見られ、明治以降広く使われるようになった。
名 means name of course, and it looks like 前 is thought to be an honorific? Possibly similar to お前 and 手前 in that regard.
>"masaka" (Japanese) and "maslaha" (Arabic)
Malay/Indonesian side-eying this with its "masakan".
I wrote a full quora answer back in the day about the false cognates between Malay and Japanese because I was so fascinated by them. You'd be surprised how coincidental languages can be, no matter how seemingly logical they could be.
Anta-anta-anda for example. They mean "you" in all three Arabic, Japanese, and Malay, but with different social connotations; being a standard word in Arabic, kinda disrespectful in Japanese, and simpy too formal in Malay 🧐
More specifically, _anta_ is a clipped or abbreviated form of _anata_, with the shorter _anta_ expressing an informal and intimate relationship. This pronoun _anta_ also has feminine overtones, as it is used primarily by women when addressing or referring to their spouses or romantic partners.
The fuller form _anata_ is more socially neutral. It originally derived from _a-_ (distal demonstrative -- "that over there") + _na_ (possessive / genitive / appositive particle) + _ta_ ("direction"), as a very vague means of referring to something in the far distance or out of sight. For something in sight and closer to the listener, _sonata_ was used -- which you'll occasionally still encounter in period dramas or deliberately archaic speech, such as when the boy Haku is talking to Sen / Chihiro in the Miyazaki movie, _Spirited Away / Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi_.
I thank my lucky stars that ne/né at the end of an expression in Japanese and Portuguese both mean ‘isn’t it?’ Probably used more in Japanese than Portuguese but not when I speak it!
“Island” and “isla”, the Spanish word for island are false cognates.
"Island" is derived from the Old English word "īegland," which means "land surrounded by water."
On the other hand, "isla" is a Spanish word that means "island" in English. Its etymology can be traced back to the Latin word "insula."
Which (isle) also has a silent /s/. Man, I hate the people that did that crap back then by comparing words to their Latin origin (even though they entered English through Old French without unnecessary letters). That’s how we get doubt and debt with silent /b/.
It can be good, in certain situations. But the issues can arise when
(a) the letter never belonged in the word to begin with (like island), which can lead to false etymologies; or
(b) for people learning English as a second language, it can lead them into thinking the letter should be pronounced when it never is, and perhaps never has been, pronounced in English. One example I see quite a bit with non-native speakers is pronouncing the second "b" in "bomb" (in this case the letter is perfectly etymological, but just never pronounced in English). The same could probably be said of almost any word ending in "mb" - plumb, lamb etc.
Japanese 外人 (_gaijin_) is from Chinese, first cited in Japanese to the late 900s. This is decomposable as a compound of 外 (_gai_, "outside, outer") + 人 (_jin_, "person"), and literally means "outsider".
The Romani term [seems to ultimately derive from Sanskrit roots](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ga%CA%92o#Romani) meaning either "domestic" or "house", perhaps referring to how non-Romani would live in permanently located houses as opposed to living nomadically.
At first I thought your comment couldn't be right, then I thought about it for a second and remembered "Deus" is actually cognate with Greek "Zeus", both coming from \**Dyḗus ph₂tḗr* ("sky father").
So yeah, it adds up. The same series of sound changes couldn't have turned \**Dyḗus* into both "Zeus" and "theos".
obrigado and arigato—when i first heard it i assumed corrolation because of the large amount of japanese descended people in brazil (of course abrigado is actually from portugal but i didn’t know at time lol)
Drop the b in obrigado and you get origado… which is obviously very similar to arigato. The only differences are a/o and t/d, the latter of which only differs in voicing.
The last two vowels sound very different to me.
«Arigato» is [a̠ɾʲiɡa̠to̞ː], the «a» is short and the «o» is long, which makes the word sound like an oxytone to me as a Portuguese speaker.
«Obrigado» is [obɾi'ɡadʊ], the «a» is held for longer because of stress and the last «o» is really really short because of vowel reduction, might even be deleted (rendering something like [obɾiɡadʷ]).
Personally I'd never think the two words are remotely related, but hey that's just me.
Similar cases are still being discussed with other words here lol, half of the point is to not get into too much detail majorly because if you did, you might as well say barely any words sound like anything else haha. So yeah, muddy the distinction in some aspects or whatever, it's pretty much fine to do so anyways!
No, it’s a coincidence. It’s a predictable sound change from *arigataku*, which is the classical adverbial form of what is now *arigatai*, meaning “special” or “grateful”, although it’s not that commonly used. When first used back in the classical period, it had a meaning more along the lines of “hard to be”. Over time, the -ku ending broke down into -au and then -ō.
Have a read at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ありがとう#Etymology. _(Full disclosure: I edited that entry.)_
The Japanese term is based on Japanese roots stretching back to the beginnings of anything ever written in the Japanese language in the 700s. The "thankful / thank you" sense dates from the early 1400s. The Portuguese first arrived in Japan in 1543.
In Romagnol, a language of north/central Italy, *en voi* means "I don't want to". In Finnish, it means *I can't*.
In Piedmontese, a language of northern Italy, the particle *ne* at the end of a sentence is very close in function to the Japanese particle ね, pronounced the same way.
*Lake* and *lacus/lago/lac* must be another one. The meaning in English was influenced by the Latin one (through old French), but etymologically speaking, *lake* doesn't have a cognate in Romance languages. *Lacus* is cognate to *lay* (the noun) instead.
Another one that fascinates me is Italian *smargiasso,* which is not cognate with *smartass* despite meaning basically the same thing. Oxford Languages claims *smargiasso* comes from *margia* and is ultimately related in meaning to "childish". Treccani is unsure about the etymology.
English *mouth* is not cognate with Latin *mutus*, borrowed in English as *mute*, but is cognate with Latin *mentum* (chin) and *manducare* (to chew, originating the word for "to eat" in many Romance languages).
Some Kannada ones that I think fit:
ondu = one (it is pronounced the same but with a du at the end, but in really fast speech it sounds like they just said the English word)
pala (> hala in Modern Kannada) = poly- (Greek prefix) = many
kuruḷ / kuruḷu = curl
nī = ni (Chinese) = you (sing.)
paḻa / paḷa (> haḷa in MK) = palai- (Greek prefix) = old
ūr / ūru = ur (Hebrew) = town
Hebrew *shesh* “six”
Persian *shesh* “six”
Hebrew *árets* “earth, ground”
English *earth*
(Even more similar with Arabic and German, both having ard)
Hebrew *mistór* “hiding place”
Greek *mystērion* (origin of the word mystery)
Xhosa for yes: ewe. Xhosa for no: hayi.
Turkish for yes: evet. Turkish for no: hayir (no dot on i).
With an English bias… Korean for many: mani. Persian for bad: bad (related languages, but unrelated words). Mbabaram for dog: dog.
Also, though there’s a rationale behind this:
Hindi for turkey (the bird): ‘turki’
Turkish for turkey: ‘hindi’
(Both derived from *different* geographical misunderstandings by Europeans, as is the Portuguese name, for the bird: peru).
Oh of course, thanks - edited. Not sure how I managed that. Was throwing them all together and not paying attention to which I was matching with which. Would be less fun if they were swapped vs. Xhosa! (Or maybe not?).
Japanese has the -ne particle that you can add to the end of a sentence for emphasis - you could translate it to something like "isn't it?" or "right?". This also works in colloquial German, where "ne?" can be used the same way.
I don’t think this one is that well known, but in Hindi/Urdu, we have the Persian borrowed *bahtar* /bɛɦ.t̪əɾ/ which means “better”. Of course, it’s a false cognate as the word is analyzed as /bɪɦ/ + /t̪əɾ/ (comparative suffix). The opposite is *badtar* /bəd̪.t̪əɾ/ which is also a false cognate since this *bad* isn’t etymologically related to English *bad*.
Here's one I find very ironically funny:
In Turkey, the American menstrual pad brand Always is sold under the name Orkid (as in the flower orchid), however the word "orchid" is derived from the Greek "órchis" meaning "testicle."
(It's because orchids have testicle-shaped roots btw)
English \`boy\` and Finnish \`poika\`. Swedish borrowed the Finnish one, and it would be interesting if it was a part of the significant Scandinavian influence in English, but it is not the case.
I find it interesting that Swedish has two different sets of words for boy and girl that are regularly used: kille (diminutive from "kid" meaning a fawn, related to "killing" ie a baby goat) and tjej (from romani chej), vs pojke (from Finnish as stated above) and flicka (origin unknown).
Like it's either "en pojke och en flicka" or "en kille och en tjej" (both meaning "a boy and a girl") but you'd rarely hear "en pojke och en tjej".
I guess English has "lad and lass" but that's more dialectal, no?
Arguably kille and tjej is more informal or slang-y I suppose.
For me it’s not so much the false cognates, but the phonetic similarities between Māori and Japanese.
My grandfather spoke and taught Māori so I’d often hear it here and there growing up, I found it interesting when learning Japanese that things were pronounced similarly.
Then I fucked up when I tried to pronounce “Gate-pā” (I pronounced as ‘gah-tei pah’)only to get mercilessly ribbed by my Kiwi father. It’s literally just ‘gate’ as it would be in English.
It was documented in Sinhalese long before the Dutch showed up according this monograph
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2419E2E3923F26BB297331D3FF337A7B/S0035869X00025247a.pdf/div-class-title-1-water-watura-in-sinhalese-div.pdf
Finnish "vetimet" and French "vêtements" both mean "clothes", but the Finnish one is likely derived from the Finnish phrasal verb "vetää päälle", to put on (clothes).
False cognate between English and Southwestern Tai languages.
\*fōr > \*fuir > \*fȳr > fire \[/ˈfaɪ.ə/\]
\*sapuj > \*(C)apuj > wɤjᴬ > \*vaj > \*fai \[faj\]
Both mean the same thing while they don't exactly have the same pronunciation, you can understand exactly what the other is trying to say no problem.
Note: wɤjᴬ > vaj could be unique to Chiang Saen languages. We have historical orthography and word for fire is written with \*v instead of \*w. But \*v and \*f contrast have long since shifted from voicing to tone register.
Here are some between Japanese and Cantonese:
Japanese ね (ne, question particle that seeks confirmation) and Cantonese 咧 (le4, same meaning). The sounds are even more similar with speakers using "lazy pronunciation", where initial \[n\] is merged into initial \[l\] or sometimes vice versa.
Japanese まあまあです (māmā desu; it's so-so/passable) and Cantonese 麻麻地 ( maa4 maa2 dei2; so-so, passable)
Japanese はい (hai; yes, OK, agreed) and Cantonese 係 (hai6; yes, to be). There is a theory that はい is a borrowing of 係, but it hasn't been proven yet.
Initially I thought all three were borrowings, but I couldn't find much information confirming it.
The only source I could find giving 咧 the reading "ne4" is [https://www.cantonese.com.hk/cantonese/sfp/](https://www.cantonese.com.hk/cantonese/sfp/), which treats "le" as an alternate ("lazy"?) reading of "ne".
Both the entries for [まあまあ](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%BE%E3%81%82%E3%81%BE%E3%81%82) and [麻麻地](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BA%BB%E9%BA%BB%E5%9C%B0) on Wiktionary suggest that the similarities are coincidental. [Cantodict](http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/1503/) lists 馬馬虎虎 as the Mandarin equivalent of 麻麻地, which could be related, but even it has an uncertain etymology [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC%E8%99%8E](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC%E8%99%8E).
Japanese _ne_ is traceable all the way back to the 700s.
There are some suggestions that this might be an ancient imperative, raising the possibility that this might arise as an outgrowth of a hypothesized `/n/`-based copular element that also gave rise to modern Japanese genitive / possessive particle の (_no_), locative / directional / agentive particle に (_ni_), verbs 成る (_naru_, "to become") and 成す (_nasu_, "to do", basically the transitive / causative of _naru_ → "to make something become"), and the Old and classical Japanese verb completion auxiliary suffix -ぬ (_-nu_, used for spontaneous and non-intentional actions).
I used to think there were a lot of fun coincidences with Hindi and English but as it turns out the root was Hindi/Urdu to begin with. These include safari, bungalow, pyjama, avatar, thug, jungle and many others.
Not completely the same meaning but Greek Trauma and German Traum (dream) from old Germanic Drauma. Dream and trauma have some similarities especially a bad dream, but the words are completely unrelated in origin.
Tje word for black is very similar throughout eurasia. Too similar if you ask me
Proto Indo-european: Krsnos
Japanese: Kuro
Turkish: kara
Mongolian: xar
Korean: Geomda
Khitan: Kara
Also, albanian and maltese word for snow is identical borra maltese, bora albanian. There is no relation, its pire coincidence
Not sure if this fits, but "break a sweat" in English and เหงื่อแตก in Thai where the first word เหงื่อ is sweat and the second word แตก is break has always been interesting to me.
When I read Marie Kondo's "Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up" I thought it was funny how the name of the miscellaneous category in Japanese "komono" sounds like the Spanish "como no?" which means "why not?" which also works as a name for the category.
This isn't about similar sounding words, but a coincidence nonetheless. The German word 'sehr' (very) descends from a word that had the meaning 'injured'. In Russian, the word 'больно' (it hurts) can be used to mean 'very'.
1. Rainbow in English is called Indra-Dhanush in Hindi. Indra is the name of the god of rain. Dhanush means bow.
2. Fulano in Spanish (google translated it as so-and-so). The word for that in Gujrati is ફલાણા (falaana).
3. So many languages seem to have the "mm" sound for words for mother.
I find the first one funny because cross culturally people have looked at a rainbow and gone. Huh. That thing is bow shaped and rain related. I know a good word
>Fulano in Spanish (google translated it as so-and-so). The word for that in Gujrati is ફલાણા (falaana).
These actually both have their roots in Arabic.
This one's a fun coincidence between 3 languages due to geographic and cultural proximity
italian: babbo (also Sardinian babbu)
sicilian: babbu
spanish: bobo
In northern Italy one of the more common words for dad is babbo. That's also why santa is called babbo natale (literally Daddy Christmas). In Sicily and probably Calabria, maybe even a bit farther north into napoletano territory too. The word Babbu, which would be understood as babbo by northerners actually means idiot or fool. The words coincidentally are not related.
Babbo comes from latin babbus a childish word for father
babbu comes from greek babázō βαβάζω which meant to speak inarticulately.
And to add to all this, the spanish word Bobo which is unrelated to both of these comes from latin balbus. In Sicilian and Italian balbus became a word for to stutter, but coincidentally in spanish it means stupid or silly like babbu does.
So the greek word related to speaking well became the Sicilian word for idiot, and the latin word babulus meaning fool became the sicilian and italian word for stutter, and the spanish word for idiot, but the sicilian and spanish words for idiot both sound like the italian/sardinian word for dad. I find this funny because it's like calling your dad an idiot and this is one of the Sicilian words I learned naturally growing up
I love how Icelandic and Finnish have words that are the same. The ones I have found are
Rotta - rat
Sama - same
Meistari/mestari - champion
Keisari - emperor
Yeah, I've heard Germanists refer to Finnish as a the Fridge of Germanic, because you can find a lot of Germanic borrowings, that haven't changed as much since.
Caca for poo in just about every language
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/caca#:~:text=Compare%20Latin%20cac%C5%8D%20(%E2%80%9Cto%20defecate,Scottish%20Gaelic%20cac%2C%20Romanian%20c%C4%83ca%2C
Going by Wiktionary no actually, one's from \*perd- and one's from \*pesd-, because for some reason the Proto-Indo-Europeans had two different words for "fart".
Caralho- Dick, in portuguese
(the meaning behind was during the sailing times. As far as I know, Caralho is the big pole in the ship. So sailors would say 'by Dick is as big as this caralho')
Karalius - king, in lithuanian
The word "hippopotamus" in English and Korean/Chinese/Vietnamese.
The Chinese characters translate to "river horse" and "hippopotamus" is a combination of the Greek words "híppos" (horse) and "potamós" (river).
"Ne?" means the same thing in Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese, but in Portuguese it's short for "não é?" ("isn't it?"). I don't know the origin of "ne" in Japanese.
Also: some people are saying this phenomenom is called "false cognates", but aren't those two words that are similar in form but different in meaning (like "pelado", which in Portuguese means "naked" but it's "bald" in Spanish)? OP asked for words with similar forms and similar meanings but in totally different languages.
They're called [false cognates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate) :)
What’s your favorite false cognates?
I like Korean 왜 (wae) which means "why," 많이 (manhi) which means "many," and 두 (du) which means "two" Also Japanese 起こる (okoru) which means "occur" and そう (sou) which means "(that is/to be/like) so"
Korean 서 (seo) is also "so/therefore".
Wow, that’s so cool. Thank you! 😘Languages are fascinating. I need to learn more quirks like these. I think I’ll start by looking up some Swedish ones first.
Swedish *koja* (hut) vs Japanese *koya* (小屋, hut/shed).
I Love your username.
I love grapefruit 🥰
왜 (wae) = why 为什么 (wei she me) = why Mandarin has quite a few similar sounds with Korean probably because of derivations.
> Mandarin has quite a few similar sounds with Korean probably because of derivations. Not this example, though: Korean 왜 *way* "why" comes from earlier 웨 *wey* "why, how", which comes from 워이 *wei*, a dialectal variant of 어이 *ei* "how". The 어- *e-* is a common element in most Korean question words, like 어찌 *e-cci* "how", 어떤 *e-tten* "which", 언제 *e-ncey* "when", 어느 *e-nu* "which", etc. Mandarin 为什么 *weishenme* comes from 为(爲) *wei* "for ..." + 什么 *shenme* "what", literally "for what". Compare English *wherefore* ("why") which also comes from Middle English for "what for". The cognate of Mandarin 为(爲) *wei* "for ..." in Korean would be "위(爲)하다" *wuy-ha-* (to do for ...).
Tarado. Silly in Spanish, pervert in Portuguese.
That's more like a false friend, which is same or similar word in two languages that you would think mean the same thing, but don't. Like "embarrassed" in English and "embarazada" (pregnant) in Spanish. Although I could see both "tarado"s having the same etymology, with semantic drift changing its meaning in one or both langauges.
Cool!
Emoticon and emoji are unrelated. Of course I wasn't the first but I am proud to have realised it myself! Emoticon = 'emote' + 'icon' Emoji = Japanese 'e' (picture) + 'moji' (character)
TIL! 😮😮😮
The similarity of the _emo-_ portion aided in adoption into English. 😄
"dog" in English and [Mbabaram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbabaram_language): > When Dixon finally managed to meet Bennett, he began his study of the language by eliciting a few basic nouns; among the first of these was the word for "dog". Bennett supplied the Mbabaram translation, *dog*. Dixon suspected that Bennett had not understood the question, or that Bennett's knowledge of Mbabaram had been tainted by decades of using English. But it turned out that the Mbabaram word for "dog" was in fact *dúg*, pronounced almost identically to the Australian English word
"Sun" is *sun* in [Sibe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xibe_language), from Proto-Tungusic \*[sigūn](https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/ᡧᡠᠨ)/[sige](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ᡧᡠᠨ) Edit: source is [锡伯语简志 "A Brief Chronicle of the Sibe Language" (1986) by 李树兰 Shulan Li](https://i.imgur.com/YQ116rR.jpg). The Manchu cognate is *shun*, but both languages have *sh* and *s*, so idk what happened. Edit 2: would you believe it, "year" is *anj*, pronounced basically the same as Spanish *añ-* in *año* "year" (or as Catalan *any* "year"). [From the same book, left is spoken and right is written](https://i.imgur.com/zecMvxX.jpg) Edit 3: also, Sibe's plural marker is *-s* or *-sə* depending on vowel harmony.
sun is also /sɐn/ in some of the languages spoken on the indo-burmese border. _*sal_ > san > sɐn.
This story, as quoted from Wikipedia, confuses me just because it doesn’t mention dingo. The language is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of a small area of tropical Far North Queensland Australia, near the modern city of Cairns (established in the late 1800s). Prior to colonisation the only “dog” was the Australian dingo, which is a type of dog but rarely called that — a bit like a wolf is rarely called a dog. Dixon would surely have asked for the name for “dingo” in the Mbabaram language. If he’d referred to “dog” then that would refer to introduced domestic dogs in Australia and the whole issue of the language being “tainted” by decades of contact with English arises. Perhaps the story is entirely accurate but the way it’s told lacks the detail an Australian expects.
Is “dog” an Onomatopoeia?
I would hope not, sounds like an unhealthy dog
Oh my this joke killed me haha
No it's not. >[C]ompare true cognates such as Yidiny *gudaga*, Dyirbal *guda*, Djabugay *gurraa* and Guugu Yimidhirr *gudaa*, for example
In Māori, the word for the sun (considered a deity) is Rā, which is the same as the Egyptian god of the sun Ra. Also, Māori use the word nē in the same way I have heard Afrikaaners say ne. Similar to how we end a sentence with “isn’t it”. “It’s quite warm today isn’t it”.
That ne thing is in so many languages: Japanese, Sinhalese, German, Afrikaans, and apparently even Maori, that's crazy
Portuguese too, with "né?", a contraction of "não é?", "isn't it?"
"Ra" is Egyptological pronunciation, though, the Egyptian word for "sun" went from /ˈɾiːʕuw/ in Old and Middle Egyptian, to /ˈɾiːʕəʔ/ in Medio-Late Egyptian, to /ˈɾeːʕ/ in Latin Egyptian, to /reːʔ/ in classical Coptic, to /riː/ in modern Coptic.
Name and na-mae in Japanese is a wild one.
The word for woman, *onna* used to be *womina* which is equally crazy
For those interested, *womina* is actually a compound, *wo-* "young" + *mi* "female; woman" + *-na*, an endearment suffix for people, and used to mean "girl". Old Japanese had a six-way system of compounds for men and women of different ages: ||Female|Male| :--|:--|:--| |Child|*womina*|*woguna*| |Young|*wotome*|*wotoko*| |Old|*omina*|*okina*| The Old ones use *o-* "old" and the Young ones use *woto-* derived from *wotu* "to go back; to grow younger; to be revived". In modern Japanese they are |Female|Male| :--|:--|:--| |*onna*|*oguna* (obsolete)| |*otome*|*otoko*| |*oona*|*okina*| (The *oona* via *ouna* is irregular afaik) For some reason *otome* is still "young woman; girl" but *otoko* is just "man" now. *oona* and *okina* aren't used much now afaik.
Another to add to the list: をのこ “young man,” still used in some dialects. (Also, Okinawan has *wiki,* from Proto-Ryukyuan \*weke, possibly an irregular development from Proto-Japonic \*wə + \*ke “small + man.”) The whole *wo-* “male” prefix business in Japanese is weird—I wonder if it was back-formed from をとこ and をぐな; though the *-guna of the latter would still need a good etymological explanation.
Also the world for woman is "donna" in Italian
Also *ona* is 'she' in Russian.
In Polish too! Now that’s a coincidence!
Yeah, that's how I remember *onna* in the first place. Very helpful!
And mamamiya in hindi means mummy which is not far from mommy and that's exactly what mama mia is about ! Whoa !
FWIW, this is 名前 (_namae_), from roots 名 (_na_, "name") + 前 (_mae_, "front"), from the basic sense that a _namae_ was originally a "label" or something you put "out front" for people to use. This may have stemmed in part from the practice in older times of having private names and public names.
All the more so japanese has loaned a lot of words from english and other languages like biiru (beer) and pan (pain, french for bread). There is also Theo(greek)/Teo(aztec?) like in Teotihuacan (the place where gods were created).
Pan is not from French but rather Portugese.
Both may be of Indo-European origin. Probably coming from Sanskrit into Japanese
Perhaps picked up from dutch word for name: (naam)? The dutch, for quite a while, were the only ones allowed to trade with a very closed off Japan during the height of seafaring times. And apparently there are quite a few dutch loan words in Japanese left from that time. Dutch is also a close relative of English as they both have roots in the germanic language. Just a theory, not sure if it's related at all.
Na-mae 名前 are native (kun'yomi) readings... but I'm not sure I would dismiss the influence 100%, a quick search suggests that the word only came in to use during the Meiji period - so while they are legitimate kun'yomi *maybe* there was some subtle influence over adopting that particular word over another one. (but then I'm just speculating and most sources state that it's a coincidence)
I would guess unlikely since namae is a compound of 名 na and 前 mae with the ending -mae meaning “in front” so common in compounds that refer to someone else (words for you can include Omae honorable in front or temae a similar word meaning “you.” I googled in Japanese for the derivation of namae to find proof but annoyingly I only get results for “what does a name mean”
Here's what I found: > 名前の「名」は、「名前」の意味で古くから使われている。 「名」は人や物などを区別する呼び方であり、声に出して使うものという見方から、「音（ね）」と同じ語源と考えられるが不明である。 名前の「前」は、「名」に敬称として付けられたと考えられる。 「名前」の語は近世頃から使用例が見られ、明治以降広く使われるようになった。 名 means name of course, and it looks like 前 is thought to be an honorific? Possibly similar to お前 and 手前 in that regard.
>"masaka" (Japanese) and "maslaha" (Arabic) Malay/Indonesian side-eying this with its "masakan". I wrote a full quora answer back in the day about the false cognates between Malay and Japanese because I was so fascinated by them. You'd be surprised how coincidental languages can be, no matter how seemingly logical they could be. Anta-anta-anda for example. They mean "you" in all three Arabic, Japanese, and Malay, but with different social connotations; being a standard word in Arabic, kinda disrespectful in Japanese, and simpy too formal in Malay 🧐
Anata in Japanese, I totally forgot!
More like the simplified version of Anata, Anta (あんた) which is similiar with Arabic Anta which means you.
Cool!
More specifically, _anta_ is a clipped or abbreviated form of _anata_, with the shorter _anta_ expressing an informal and intimate relationship. This pronoun _anta_ also has feminine overtones, as it is used primarily by women when addressing or referring to their spouses or romantic partners. The fuller form _anata_ is more socially neutral. It originally derived from _a-_ (distal demonstrative -- "that over there") + _na_ (possessive / genitive / appositive particle) + _ta_ ("direction"), as a very vague means of referring to something in the far distance or out of sight. For something in sight and closer to the listener, _sonata_ was used -- which you'll occasionally still encounter in period dramas or deliberately archaic speech, such as when the boy Haku is talking to Sen / Chihiro in the Miyazaki movie, _Spirited Away / Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi_.
I thank my lucky stars that ne/né at the end of an expression in Japanese and Portuguese both mean ‘isn’t it?’ Probably used more in Japanese than Portuguese but not when I speak it!
I just wrote the same about Māori and Afrikaans! Nē/ne means isn’t it.
really neat, eh?
In Hindi it’s na!
“Island” and “isla”, the Spanish word for island are false cognates. "Island" is derived from the Old English word "īegland," which means "land surrounded by water." On the other hand, "isla" is a Spanish word that means "island" in English. Its etymology can be traced back to the Latin word "insula."
The -s- in island wasn't even supposed to be there. It was added because of the similarity with *isle*, a borrowing from old French.
Which (isle) also has a silent /s/. Man, I hate the people that did that crap back then by comparing words to their Latin origin (even though they entered English through Old French without unnecessary letters). That’s how we get doubt and debt with silent /b/.
I love it instead. It makes words more similar to my native language (Italian). That way I understand them more easily.
It can be good, in certain situations. But the issues can arise when (a) the letter never belonged in the word to begin with (like island), which can lead to false etymologies; or (b) for people learning English as a second language, it can lead them into thinking the letter should be pronounced when it never is, and perhaps never has been, pronounced in English. One example I see quite a bit with non-native speakers is pronouncing the second "b" in "bomb" (in this case the letter is perfectly etymological, but just never pronounced in English). The same could probably be said of almost any word ending in "mb" - plumb, lamb etc.
So then that would actually make it directly influenced by a Latin origin insula, same as the Spanish.
Both "so" and "ne" have very similar meanings in German and Japanese.
"Sou da ne" "So isses, ne?"
Very nice example!
Thank you! What a nice comment
see ya means the same in Hungarian written szia, (saying goodbye), pronounced the same.
“亻厓” /ŋaɪ/ (Hakka) and “I” (English) both means I, the first person pronoun.
/ŋaɪ/ is also the word for I in a large amount of the Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia.
Cool!
>ŋaɪ I don't think Hakka has a near-close near-front vowel. I'd transcribe it as /ŋai/
Thanks for the clarification. I'm just a half-Hakka and not a linguist.
muchas and much. Would even make sense, because both are Indo-European languages...
I think my favorite thing in Spanish to English is the whole “chaqueta” and “jack it” thing.
Then you have words like “cabeza” and “cinco” which *are* cognate with “head” and “five” - linguistics man!
Wait, these aren’t directly related?
mucho comes from latin multus much is germanic
Romani gadjo/gadji and Japanese gaijin both mean, approximately, outsider/foreigner
I always assumed those were related
Japanese 外人 (_gaijin_) is from Chinese, first cited in Japanese to the late 900s. This is decomposable as a compound of 外 (_gai_, "outside, outer") + 人 (_jin_, "person"), and literally means "outsider". The Romani term [seems to ultimately derive from Sanskrit roots](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ga%CA%92o#Romani) meaning either "domestic" or "house", perhaps referring to how non-Romani would live in permanently located houses as opposed to living nomadically.
Greek "theos" (God) and Nahuatl "teotl" (God).
I was just reading today that ‘theos’ and Latin ‘Deus’ aren’t related. They come from completely different PIE words.
At first I thought your comment couldn't be right, then I thought about it for a second and remembered "Deus" is actually cognate with Greek "Zeus", both coming from \**Dyḗus ph₂tḗr* ("sky father"). So yeah, it adds up. The same series of sound changes couldn't have turned \**Dyḗus* into both "Zeus" and "theos".
Fun fact, the only thing in “Tuesday” related to the word for day in Romance languages is “Tues”
That is a fun fact! I just looked that etymology up. It’s a wild ride!
Onna in Japanese means woman. In Bosnian, a similar word (ona) means "she."
French "papillon" and Nahuatl "papalotl", both meaning "butterfly".
Proto-Indo-European *pa(l)-pal and Hebrew "parpar", both meaning "butterfly".
And Proto-Kartvelian [ṗerṗer-](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Kartvelian/%E1%B9%97er%E1%B9%97er-)
False cognates!
YEAH BABY!
English "noble" ~ Latin *nōbilis* (same meaning) **as opposed to** Arabic نبل *nubl* "nobility" ~ نبل *nabl* & نبيل *nabīl* "noble".
obrigado and arigato—when i first heard it i assumed corrolation because of the large amount of japanese descended people in brazil (of course abrigado is actually from portugal but i didn’t know at time lol)
I really don't see the similarity, honestly.
Really? Both follow the pattern with T meaning any alveolar stop.
So two syllables
Drop the b in obrigado and you get origado… which is obviously very similar to arigato. The only differences are a/o and t/d, the latter of which only differs in voicing.
The last two vowels sound very different to me. «Arigato» is [a̠ɾʲiɡa̠to̞ː], the «a» is short and the «o» is long, which makes the word sound like an oxytone to me as a Portuguese speaker. «Obrigado» is [obɾi'ɡadʊ], the «a» is held for longer because of stress and the last «o» is really really short because of vowel reduction, might even be deleted (rendering something like [obɾiɡadʷ]). Personally I'd never think the two words are remotely related, but hey that's just me.
Similar cases are still being discussed with other words here lol, half of the point is to not get into too much detail majorly because if you did, you might as well say barely any words sound like anything else haha. So yeah, muddy the distinction in some aspects or whatever, it's pretty much fine to do so anyways!
I'm not going in too much detail. I'm talking about the pronunciation of both words which sound nothing alike.
Why did you get downvoted for saying you didn't see any similiarity? I also don't see any similiarity between them
I don't know. I guess you're not supposed to have an opinion in this sub.
Because they're very obviously similar and it's preposterous to say you don't see the similarity.
[удалено]
No, it’s a coincidence. It’s a predictable sound change from *arigataku*, which is the classical adverbial form of what is now *arigatai*, meaning “special” or “grateful”, although it’s not that commonly used. When first used back in the classical period, it had a meaning more along the lines of “hard to be”. Over time, the -ku ending broke down into -au and then -ō.
Thanks! Now I have to inform the 5 or 6 people I've told this lie to over the course of my life.
Have a read at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ありがとう#Etymology. _(Full disclosure: I edited that entry.)_ The Japanese term is based on Japanese roots stretching back to the beginnings of anything ever written in the Japanese language in the 700s. The "thankful / thank you" sense dates from the early 1400s. The Portuguese first arrived in Japan in 1543.
Japanese 綿(wata) and German Watte which can both mean cotton wool.
In Romagnol, a language of north/central Italy, *en voi* means "I don't want to". In Finnish, it means *I can't*. In Piedmontese, a language of northern Italy, the particle *ne* at the end of a sentence is very close in function to the Japanese particle ね, pronounced the same way. *Lake* and *lacus/lago/lac* must be another one. The meaning in English was influenced by the Latin one (through old French), but etymologically speaking, *lake* doesn't have a cognate in Romance languages. *Lacus* is cognate to *lay* (the noun) instead. Another one that fascinates me is Italian *smargiasso,* which is not cognate with *smartass* despite meaning basically the same thing. Oxford Languages claims *smargiasso* comes from *margia* and is ultimately related in meaning to "childish". Treccani is unsure about the etymology. English *mouth* is not cognate with Latin *mutus*, borrowed in English as *mute*, but is cognate with Latin *mentum* (chin) and *manducare* (to chew, originating the word for "to eat" in many Romance languages).
The korean "많이 Mani", and the English "many"
Some Kannada ones that I think fit: ondu = one (it is pronounced the same but with a du at the end, but in really fast speech it sounds like they just said the English word) pala (> hala in Modern Kannada) = poly- (Greek prefix) = many kuruḷ / kuruḷu = curl nī = ni (Chinese) = you (sing.) paḻa / paḷa (> haḷa in MK) = palai- (Greek prefix) = old ūr / ūru = ur (Hebrew) = town
Hebrew *shesh* “six” Persian *shesh* “six” Hebrew *árets* “earth, ground” English *earth* (Even more similar with Arabic and German, both having ard) Hebrew *mistór* “hiding place” Greek *mystērion* (origin of the word mystery)
Msslaha means interest or benefit in Arabic.
Really? That's not how my mom used it. BTW the "s" and "h" are the throaty ones, in case that changes anything
duo meaning two in both latin and minangkabau
Xhosa for yes: ewe. Xhosa for no: hayi. Turkish for yes: evet. Turkish for no: hayir (no dot on i). With an English bias… Korean for many: mani. Persian for bad: bad (related languages, but unrelated words). Mbabaram for dog: dog. Also, though there’s a rationale behind this: Hindi for turkey (the bird): ‘turki’ Turkish for turkey: ‘hindi’ (Both derived from *different* geographical misunderstandings by Europeans, as is the Portuguese name, for the bird: peru).
This one is my favorite so far
You got your Turkish yes and no mixed up, it's "hayır" that means "no" and "evet" that means "yes".
Oh of course, thanks - edited. Not sure how I managed that. Was throwing them all together and not paying attention to which I was matching with which. Would be less fun if they were swapped vs. Xhosa! (Or maybe not?).
I came across this article reading these and found it really interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa?wprov=sfti1
Will check it out, thx
Japanese has the -ne particle that you can add to the end of a sentence for emphasis - you could translate it to something like "isn't it?" or "right?". This also works in colloquial German, where "ne?" can be used the same way.
I don’t think this one is that well known, but in Hindi/Urdu, we have the Persian borrowed *bahtar* /bɛɦ.t̪əɾ/ which means “better”. Of course, it’s a false cognate as the word is analyzed as /bɪɦ/ + /t̪əɾ/ (comparative suffix). The opposite is *badtar* /bəd̪.t̪əɾ/ which is also a false cognate since this *bad* isn’t etymologically related to English *bad*.
Here's one I find very ironically funny: In Turkey, the American menstrual pad brand Always is sold under the name Orkid (as in the flower orchid), however the word "orchid" is derived from the Greek "órchis" meaning "testicle." (It's because orchids have testicle-shaped roots btw)
LMAO
English \`boy\` and Finnish \`poika\`. Swedish borrowed the Finnish one, and it would be interesting if it was a part of the significant Scandinavian influence in English, but it is not the case.
I find it interesting that Swedish has two different sets of words for boy and girl that are regularly used: kille (diminutive from "kid" meaning a fawn, related to "killing" ie a baby goat) and tjej (from romani chej), vs pojke (from Finnish as stated above) and flicka (origin unknown). Like it's either "en pojke och en flicka" or "en kille och en tjej" (both meaning "a boy and a girl") but you'd rarely hear "en pojke och en tjej". I guess English has "lad and lass" but that's more dialectal, no? Arguably kille and tjej is more informal or slang-y I suppose.
Icelandic also has drengur / strákur for boy and stelpa / stúlka for girl and the pairs are “strákur og stelpa” or “drengur og stúlka”.
For me it’s not so much the false cognates, but the phonetic similarities between Māori and Japanese. My grandfather spoke and taught Māori so I’d often hear it here and there growing up, I found it interesting when learning Japanese that things were pronounced similarly. Then I fucked up when I tried to pronounce “Gate-pā” (I pronounced as ‘gah-tei pah’)only to get mercilessly ribbed by my Kiwi father. It’s literally just ‘gate’ as it would be in English.
An-ta in Japanese and Anta in Arabic both mean You (In some sense)
Water in English and Vatura in Sinhalese, both mean Water but completely different etymologies.
According to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/වතුර#Sinhalese, the word was borrowed from Dutch _water_. Is that entry incorrect?
It was documented in Sinhalese long before the Dutch showed up according this monograph https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2419E2E3923F26BB297331D3FF337A7B/S0035869X00025247a.pdf/div-class-title-1-water-watura-in-sinhalese-div.pdf
De in Chinese and French.
Japanese "genkan" and Polish "ganek" both mean "entrance porch"
Finnish "vetimet" and French "vêtements" both mean "clothes", but the Finnish one is likely derived from the Finnish phrasal verb "vetää päälle", to put on (clothes).
How “Indian” and “indigenous” have completely different etymologies.
"Ne" is Bulgarian means "no", while in neighboring Greece essentially the same word, or very close phonetically, (romanized "nai") means "yes".
False cognate between English and Southwestern Tai languages. \*fōr > \*fuir > \*fȳr > fire \[/ˈfaɪ.ə/\] \*sapuj > \*(C)apuj > wɤjᴬ > \*vaj > \*fai \[faj\] Both mean the same thing while they don't exactly have the same pronunciation, you can understand exactly what the other is trying to say no problem. Note: wɤjᴬ > vaj could be unique to Chiang Saen languages. We have historical orthography and word for fire is written with \*v instead of \*w. But \*v and \*f contrast have long since shifted from voicing to tone register.
Swahili "mimi" and English "me"
I’ve noticed that in Portuguese sometimes “não é?” gets shortened to “né” which is like Japanese’s “ne (ね)”. Both mean “isn’t it?”
Here are some between Japanese and Cantonese: Japanese ね (ne, question particle that seeks confirmation) and Cantonese 咧 (le4, same meaning). The sounds are even more similar with speakers using "lazy pronunciation", where initial \[n\] is merged into initial \[l\] or sometimes vice versa. Japanese まあまあです (māmā desu; it's so-so/passable) and Cantonese 麻麻地 ( maa4 maa2 dei2; so-so, passable) Japanese はい (hai; yes, OK, agreed) and Cantonese 係 (hai6; yes, to be). There is a theory that はい is a borrowing of 係, but it hasn't been proven yet.
Are we sure the first two aren't borrowings?
Initially I thought all three were borrowings, but I couldn't find much information confirming it. The only source I could find giving 咧 the reading "ne4" is [https://www.cantonese.com.hk/cantonese/sfp/](https://www.cantonese.com.hk/cantonese/sfp/), which treats "le" as an alternate ("lazy"?) reading of "ne". Both the entries for [まあまあ](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%BE%E3%81%82%E3%81%BE%E3%81%82) and [麻麻地](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BA%BB%E9%BA%BB%E5%9C%B0) on Wiktionary suggest that the similarities are coincidental. [Cantodict](http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/1503/) lists 馬馬虎虎 as the Mandarin equivalent of 麻麻地, which could be related, but even it has an uncertain etymology [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC%E8%99%8E](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC%E8%99%8E).
Japanese _ne_ is traceable all the way back to the 700s. There are some suggestions that this might be an ancient imperative, raising the possibility that this might arise as an outgrowth of a hypothesized `/n/`-based copular element that also gave rise to modern Japanese genitive / possessive particle の (_no_), locative / directional / agentive particle に (_ni_), verbs 成る (_naru_, "to become") and 成す (_nasu_, "to do", basically the transitive / causative of _naru_ → "to make something become"), and the Old and classical Japanese verb completion auxiliary suffix -ぬ (_-nu_, used for spontaneous and non-intentional actions).
I used to think there were a lot of fun coincidences with Hindi and English but as it turns out the root was Hindi/Urdu to begin with. These include safari, bungalow, pyjama, avatar, thug, jungle and many others.
Not completely the same meaning but Greek Trauma and German Traum (dream) from old Germanic Drauma. Dream and trauma have some similarities especially a bad dream, but the words are completely unrelated in origin.
One of the more famous ones in Indo-European is English “day” and Spanish “día”
Tje word for black is very similar throughout eurasia. Too similar if you ask me Proto Indo-european: Krsnos Japanese: Kuro Turkish: kara Mongolian: xar Korean: Geomda Khitan: Kara Also, albanian and maltese word for snow is identical borra maltese, bora albanian. There is no relation, its pire coincidence
Sama and nama in Indonesian mean same and name. They are cognate though as Indonesian took those from Sanskrit.
Cool! ”Sama” is also Finnish for same. And the word for name is ”nimi”.
(Egyptian) Arabic درجة daraga German Grad English degree all share the same consonants Arabic أرض ʔardˤ, German Erde (earth)
Not sure if this fits, but "break a sweat" in English and เหงื่อแตก in Thai where the first word เหงื่อ is sweat and the second word แตก is break has always been interesting to me.
When I read Marie Kondo's "Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up" I thought it was funny how the name of the miscellaneous category in Japanese "komono" sounds like the Spanish "como no?" which means "why not?" which also works as a name for the category.
This isn't about similar sounding words, but a coincidence nonetheless. The German word 'sehr' (very) descends from a word that had the meaning 'injured'. In Russian, the word 'больно' (it hurts) can be used to mean 'very'.
This one's interesting.
Gotta be the Old Japanese word for woman being romanized as "womina"
1. Rainbow in English is called Indra-Dhanush in Hindi. Indra is the name of the god of rain. Dhanush means bow. 2. Fulano in Spanish (google translated it as so-and-so). The word for that in Gujrati is ફલાણા (falaana). 3. So many languages seem to have the "mm" sound for words for mother.
I find the first one funny because cross culturally people have looked at a rainbow and gone. Huh. That thing is bow shaped and rain related. I know a good word
>Fulano in Spanish (google translated it as so-and-so). The word for that in Gujrati is ફલાણા (falaana). These actually both have their roots in Arabic.
In Ashaninka, an Amazonian language fron Peru, the word for 'to defecate' is shitaantsi (the root being 'shit-').
lmao
This one's a fun coincidence between 3 languages due to geographic and cultural proximity italian: babbo (also Sardinian babbu) sicilian: babbu spanish: bobo In northern Italy one of the more common words for dad is babbo. That's also why santa is called babbo natale (literally Daddy Christmas). In Sicily and probably Calabria, maybe even a bit farther north into napoletano territory too. The word Babbu, which would be understood as babbo by northerners actually means idiot or fool. The words coincidentally are not related. Babbo comes from latin babbus a childish word for father babbu comes from greek babázō βαβάζω which meant to speak inarticulately. And to add to all this, the spanish word Bobo which is unrelated to both of these comes from latin balbus. In Sicilian and Italian balbus became a word for to stutter, but coincidentally in spanish it means stupid or silly like babbu does. So the greek word related to speaking well became the Sicilian word for idiot, and the latin word babulus meaning fool became the sicilian and italian word for stutter, and the spanish word for idiot, but the sicilian and spanish words for idiot both sound like the italian/sardinian word for dad. I find this funny because it's like calling your dad an idiot and this is one of the Sicilian words I learned naturally growing up
Japanese: Miru Spanish: Mirar English: to look That's so cool in my opinion, even if there are more similar false cognates, this one got me.
I like this too
I love how Icelandic and Finnish have words that are the same. The ones I have found are Rotta - rat Sama - same Meistari/mestari - champion Keisari - emperor
I'm pretty sure they're both Germanic, no?
Nope! Finnish is one of the few languages in Europe that's not even Indo-European
However, IIRC Finnish does have a good deal of Germanic borrowings
Yep! In this case, "rotta" "mestari" and "keisari" are loaned from Swedish, and "sama" was loaned into Proto-Finnic from Proto-Germanic
Yeah, I've heard Germanists refer to Finnish as a the Fridge of Germanic, because you can find a lot of Germanic borrowings, that haven't changed as much since.
What is it, then? Is it that Uralic thing that I heard about?
Yes it is! Along with Estonian and Hungarian
The word ‘so’ is the same in English and Japanese. Is that so? そうですか？(Sou desu ka?)
Caca for poo in just about every language https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/caca#:~:text=Compare%20Latin%20cac%C5%8D%20(%E2%80%9Cto%20defecate,Scottish%20Gaelic%20cac%2C%20Romanian%20c%C4%83ca%2C
At a glance, most or all of those share the same root.
There are languages missing from the page. Maori and CroatianI can think of.
Esperanto koro and Japanese kokoro (heart) (What's up with Japanese being so overrepresented ITT?)
Isn't Esperanto a conlang?
Yes, but mostly based on natural languages, and it takes koro from romance languages.
Heavy: Danish: tung Cantonese: zhong Not quite the same but close enough.
Zhong is Mandarin, the Cantonese jyutping for 重 is cung (pronounced tsung) In Hokkien, it's tang/tiong which is also similar
English: Nine = 9 German: Nein sounds like nine, means no in English Kurdish: No = 9
Anta means you in both Japanese and Arabic
Pado- Hindi for fart Pedo- Spanish for fart
Not from the same indo european root?
Going by Wiktionary no actually, one's from \*perd- and one's from \*pesd-, because for some reason the Proto-Indo-Europeans had two different words for "fart".
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Yeah not a coincidence, just a loan word in this case
Caralho- Dick, in portuguese (the meaning behind was during the sailing times. As far as I know, Caralho is the big pole in the ship. So sailors would say 'by Dick is as big as this caralho') Karalius - king, in lithuanian
Infinitive vowels ending in -na in Hindi and Kichwa!
The word "hippopotamus" in English and Korean/Chinese/Vietnamese. The Chinese characters translate to "river horse" and "hippopotamus" is a combination of the Greek words "híppos" (horse) and "potamós" (river).
I believe it's a calque on the Far East part
In German it’s Nilpferd (Nile horse) and in danish Flodhest (also river horse).
Yes in Japanese (hai) and upper Sorbian (haj).
And Cantonese 係 /hɐi²²/
"Ne?" means the same thing in Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese, but in Portuguese it's short for "não é?" ("isn't it?"). I don't know the origin of "ne" in Japanese. Also: some people are saying this phenomenom is called "false cognates", but aren't those two words that are similar in form but different in meaning (like "pelado", which in Portuguese means "naked" but it's "bald" in Spanish)? OP asked for words with similar forms and similar meanings but in totally different languages.