# Word coincidence



## Moro12

I am interested in the rare phenomenon of "word coincidence" in different languages.

What I am specifically looking for is a situation when:

1. There are two different languages A and B.
2. The language A has a word M. And the language B has a word N.
3. The words M and N have identical or close meanings.
4. The words M and N are pronounced alike. (Not exactly the same, but still pretty "alike" to be recognizable).
5. M and N are not borrowed from the same source. (M is not borrowed from B; N is not borrowed from A; M and N are not borrowed from the same third language).
6. M and N are not derived from the same source due to genealogic affinity of A and B languages.
7. The languages A and B may be completely unrelated linguistically, or may still be allied - that does not matter if conditions 1 to 6 are met.

I understand there might be very few examples.
However, the following is the only example I can suggest by myself:

English: *name
*Japanese: *名前* [namae] = "name"

The words are completely unrelated, as the Japanese *名前* is a compound word with two roots: *名* [na] meaning "name" and *前* [mae] meaning "before, in front of".

I wonder if somebody could provide more examples.


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## francisgranada

Italian: *chi  *(< Lat quis, IE origin)
Hungarian: *ki *(Uralic origin)

Both are prounced [ki] and mean "who"


French: *Qui est-ce*?
Hungarian:* Ki ez*?

Both are pronounced very similarly [kies, kiez] and mean "who is it/this?"


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## francisgranada

Romanian: *fiu   *(< Latin _filius -_ _son < _Proto-Indo-European_ *bheue- to be, to grow)
_Hungarian: *fiú  *( < Proto-Finno-Ugric *_pojka - son, boy) 

(when pronounced, the Hungarian "ú" is longer)

_


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## LilianaB

Pojke is also a boy in Swedish. Would it be of Finno-Ugric origin?


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## francisgranada

Maybe yes, it could be directly from the Finnish _poika_.


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## CapnPrep

Moro12 said:


> I am interested in the rare phenomenon of "word coincidence" in different languages.
> […]
> I understand there might be very few examples.


In fact, it's not that rare, and between basically any two languages you can find dozens of examples without too much effort. Of course there can always be disagreement about how close the meanings or pronunciations have to be. But if you set out to find common words in two unrelated languages, you will usually be able to find a lot of them.

This essay might be of interest to you (it also contains a lot of examples):
How likely are chance resemblances between languages?


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## Maroseika

Spanish *temprano *and Russian _*рано *_[rano], both mean 'early'. 
Of course, Spanish word contains extra "temp", but in Russian it is also relate to time (темп [temp] - time, tempo).


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## Moro12

CapnPrep said:


> This essay might be of interest to you (it also contains a lot of examples):
> How likely are chance resemblances between languages?



A very interesting investigation. Thank you, CarnPrep!
I've especially liked its strict mathematical approach.


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## mataripis

1.)Tagalog: Paumanhin (patience)     Greek: Ipomoni       2.)Tagalog: Ibigay     English: Give  ( Read this backward and it  become "evig")     3.) Espaniol: Tono       Tagalog: tunog(sound)


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## Gavril

Italian _muta _"he/she/it changes" (transitive or intransitive) < Latin _mutat < _Old Latin _*moit__at_
Finnish _muuttaa_ "he/she/it changes" (transitive) < _muu- _"other" + causative _-ttaa_

Tagalog _ulo _"head"
Kamass _ulu _"head" (thought to be cognate with Finnish _alku _"beginning")

Old French _gros _"large" < Late Latin _grossus _"thick", thought to be cognate with Breton _bras _"large"
German _gross _"large" , cognate with Eng. _great, _Dutch _groot, _etc.


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## tFighterPilot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate


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## Anja.Ann

Hello everybody 

Italian: "fine" from Latin_ finis_ (nice, excellent, pleasant, thin, refined)
English: "fine" from old French _fin_ (nice, excellent, pleasant, thin, refined) 

Ciao


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## terredepomme

Those would actually be related words.


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## Anja.Ann

Then I must have missed something when I read the specifications detailed by Moro


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## Jabir

Portuguese "mesa" and Urdu "mez", both meaning "table".
Portuguese "chave" and Urdu "chabi", both meaning "key".

I do believe these words are same in Persian, but not sure.

edit: I don't know if English "door" and "star" have same origin that Persian "dar" and "setare"...


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## terredepomme

> I don't know if English "door" and "star" have same origin that Persian "dar" and "setare"...



Yes. From Proto-Indo-European *dʰwer- and *h₂stḗr.


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## AutumnOwl

LilianaB said:


> Pojke is also a boy in Swedish. Would it be of Finno-Ugric origin?


_Pojke_ is a direct borrow from the Finnish poika, before that a boy was _gosse_, or other dialectal names, such as _sork _on Gotland, which is still in use.


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## Gavril

I just remembered:

Welsh _mae _"(there) is"
Tagalog _may _"there is", "to have"
Polish _ma_ "has" (not absolutely sure that it's not related to Welsh _mae_, but it doesn't seem likely)


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## Explorer41

Does the Russian "воля"/Italian "voglia" fit? They sound close, and they mean nearly the same, the first being a will and the second being a wish. And I highly doubt they are cognates (though I'm not a specialist, so I can't know for sure...)

Also, a funny example: the English "to have" vs the Italian "avere".


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## francisgranada

The Russian воля comes from the Slavic verb *_voliti _and the Italian voglia from the Latin _volo, velle_. They are cognates and together with the English _will_,  German _wollen _etc... they are of *PIE origin (*wel-/*wol-)


Explorer41 said:


> ... Also, a funny example: the English "to have" vs the Italian "avere".



Indeed, it's a good example. Even better: Spanish _haber _and German _haben_... 

(the Germanic _haben, to have etc... _have different origin/etymology than the Latin _habere_)


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## Gavril

francisgranada said:


> Indeed, it's a good example. Even better: Spanish _haber _and German _haben_...
> 
> (the Germanic _haben, to have etc... _have different origin/etymology than the Latin _habere_)



I don't think that _habere _: _have _is a simple case of false cognacy.

The Latin word is traced back to IE *_ghabh-_, whose original meaning is thought to have been "grab, take" (see IEW, pp.407-09). The Germanic word is traced to IE *_kap-_, whose meaning is thought to have been "grab" (IEW, pp.527-8).

It's very hard to believe that two verbs _*kap- _and *_ghabh-_ co-existed in the same language, with very similar phonetics and the same primary meaning,  without there being some etymological relationship between the two. I think that one of these words was originally a variant of the other, or that the two words originally had more divergent meanings, but then one of them semantically influenced the other.

(I hope the above doesn't come off as pedantic, but _habere : have _is so commonly put forward as an example of false cognates that I thought the problems with this example were worth mentioning.)


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## CapnPrep

The discussion about _have_ and _habere_ could perhaps be continued in this existing thread in EHL:
Haber/Caber related to Have


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## مر هر

The usage of "haver" is totally different of "to have", at least in Portuguese. And I don't believe it is different from Portuguese in Spanish nor Italian.

"Haver" meaning is closer to "there is"


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## tFighterPilot

I'll bring an Hebrew-Greek example: Midwife. 
Hebrew: מיילדת Meyaledet (from the root yld that means child)
Greek: μαία Maia (if anyone knows its etymology I'd like to hear)


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## Explorer41

مر هر said:


> The usage of "haver" is totally different of "to have", at least in Portuguese. And I don't believe it is different from Portuguese in Spanish nor Italian.
> 
> "Haver" meaning is closer to "there is"


Oh? Well, I can't know what you mean, but... 

"*ho* un gatto" = "j'*ai* un chat" = "I *have* a cat";
 "*ho* un sogno" = "j'*ai* une rêve" = "I *have* a dream";
 (the most striking one) "*ho* ricevuto la tua lettera" = "j'*ai* reçu ta lettre" ~ "I *have* received your letter".

Are here any mistakes? I mean the usages of "avere"/"avoir"/"to have". Is the usage different from the Portuguese usage? Interesting...


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## apmoy70

tFighterPilot said:


> I'll bring an Hebrew-Greek example: Midwife.
> Hebrew: מיילדת Meyaledet (from the root yld that means child)
> Greek: μαία Maia (if anyone knows its etymology I'd like to hear)


«Μαῖα» has the same PIE root with «μάμμη» (affectionate term of address for mother and later grandmother)--> *ma-, _mom/mum/mama_


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## francisgranada

مر هر said:


> The usage of "haver" is totally different of "to have", at least in Portuguese. And I don't believe it is different from Portuguese in Spanish nor Italian.
> 
> "Haver" meaning is closer to "there is"



Simply, in some Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Neapolitan ...) the verb_ habere _(in sense of "to have") has been substituted by the verb _tenere ("to hold"), _while in other Romance languages (French, Italian ...)  the original meaning of this verb survives.


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## terredepomme

It is not the "original" meaning to be exact, for classical Latin simply used "it is to me" structure to express "I have." I think French borrowed the expression from Italian.


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## francisgranada

"Original", _in this case_, from the point of view of the Proto-Romance (or "vulgar Latin"). E.g. in old Spanish, the verb _haber _had also the meaning of "to have", thus the French borrowing from the Italian seems to me a bit improbable ... (to say so)

(but the discussion about the verb _habere_ is not the object of _this _thread ...)


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## NewtonCircus

This thread made me smile the moment I opened it. Since Dutch and German have a lot of words with similar or identical spelling/pronunciation, but often completely different meanings, mixing words from both languages can get funny.

There is the story about the Belgian receptionist with a serious cold answering a call from a German client.. The German client noticed this and mentions "_Deine Stimme ist irgendwie anders Heute_" on which the receptionist answers “_Ja, ich bin heiss Heute_” . 

_Heiß_ = Hot in German
_Hees_ = Hoarse in Dutch  

Don’t take my word for it if it ever really happened . There are quite a few of such funny stories with other words like _slim_,_ zagen_, _klappen_.


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## Gavril

Finnish _hän _"he / she"
Swedish _han _"he"

Finnish _sitten _"then"
Swedish _sedan _"then"

Again, I'm not sure that this is pure coincidence: even though the Finnish and the Swedish words are etymologically different, the speakers of these languages (and their ancestors) have been in contact for a long time, and it's possible that the meaning of one set of words (or the choice of these words over others) was influenced by that of the other set.


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## djara

Arabic أرض ardh English earth both meaning earth


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## darush

francisgranada said:


> Italian: *chi *(< Lat quis, IE origin)
> Hungarian: *ki *(Uralic origin)
> 
> Both are prounced [ki] and mean "who"
> 
> 
> French: *Qui est-ce*?
> Hungarian:* Ki ez*?
> 
> Both are pronounced very similarly [kies, kiez] and mean "who is it/this?"


Persian(Farsi): ki means who
kie is who is it', but people of Isfahan says: kies
in Persian, colloquial arm(upper part of the hand) is kat(pronounced as English cat), it is also the wing of birds.
Hugarian hand: kat
this should be a logical reason; Uralics had near contacts with Indo-european people, especially Iranic people. but there is a different example:
I heard water in Arabic(ma ماء ) is very similar to water in Thai(mai) and in an African language(mai also). 
I've found out there are three words that begines with N, are very similar almost in all Indo-european languages. they are new, name and no.


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## Moro12

darush said:


> I heard water in Arabic(ma ماء ) is very similar to water in Thai(mai) and in an African language(mai also).



"Water" in Thai is not "mai", it's "naam" น้ำ (pronounced with high tone).


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## francisgranada

darush said:


> ... in Persian, colloquial arm(upper part of the hand) is kat(pronounced as English cat), it is also the wing of birds.
> Hugarian hand: kat ...



To be precise, Hungarian *kéz*, Finnish *käsi *(Proto-Finno-Ugric _*käte)_


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## darush

francisgranada said:


> To be precise, Hungarian *kéz*, Finnish *käsi *(Proto-Finno-Ugric _*käte)_


yes, I meant Proto-Finno-Ugric. excuse me!


Moro12 said:


> "Water" in Thai is not "mai", it's "naam" น้ำ (pronounced with high tone).


thank you Moro. I just *heard* it..


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## ancalimon

Most coincidences I see are between Latin and Turkish.

Turkish: abil , ebil
English: able

Turkish: dı , di ,du ,dü
English: did

...

Turkish: deliriyom (I'm getting mad, I'm getting crazy)
English: delirium

Turkish: egemen (dominant, sovereign)
Greek: hegemon, ecumeny ...

Turkish: katılık (ally, those that join)
Greek: catholic

Turkish: töre (law, instructions from you elders)
Hebrew: torah

Turkish: batkın (better suited for piercing)
English: bodkin

Turkish: kut
English: God, good

Turkish: kavra
English: cover

Turkish: kıvır
English: curve

Turkish: ku, kup
English: cup

Turkish: kaptır
English: capture

Turkish: kaç (run away)
English: catch (to catch someone running away)

Actually I have created a list of thousands of coincidences like these  Turkish is a fun language.

My last discovery is:

Turkish besili (physically strong)
English imbecile (physically weak)

Although I'm not sure whether it's a coincidence or not.


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## aruniyan

Tamil word for water "Neer" and Greek word for water  "Nero"


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## Rallino

The present participle in Turkish is _-en_; while in Latin _-ente

Venentem virum video. = Gelen adamı görüyorum. _


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## patriota

The Japanese often end their sentences with "ne." We also do that in Brazil in some sentences (not as often though) with "né?" from "não é?" = "isn't it?", "right?".


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## Gavril

_-(t)a _is the most common infinitive suffix in Finnish. In some stem classes, the _-t- _has disappeared (as in e.g., _puhu*a*_ "speak"), making the suffix look just like the North Germanic infinitive suffix _-a _(as in Icelandic _tal*a* _"speak"), which is from earlier _*-an.

_Finnish also has a suffix _-(t)tu_ that expresses the past passive/impersonal participle of a verb: e.g., _saa*tu* _"gotten" < _saa- _"get". This is similar to the past passive participle *_-to-_ suffix seen in many IE languages (e.g., Italian _canta*to *_“sung” < _canta- _“sing”).


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## Rallino

Gavril said:


> Finnish also has a suffix _-(t)tu_ that expresses the past passive/impersonal participle of a verb: e.g., _saa*tu* _"gotten" < _saa- _"get". This is similar to the past passive participle *_-to-_ suffix seen in many IE languages (e.g., Italian _canta*to *_“sung” < _canta- _“sing”).



The past suffix in Turkish is: *-ti / -tı / -tu / -tü / -di / -dı / -du / -dü  *(which we decide according to vowel+consonant harmony). Ex: _Konuşmak --> Konuştu (He spoke)_

The past suffix in Hungarian is: *-te / -ta  *Ex: Mondani --> _Mondta (He said)
_
The past suffix in Japanese is: -*ta *Ex: _Hanasu --> Hanashimashita (He spoke)_


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## Explorer41

CapnPrep said:


> In fact, it's not that rare, and between basically any two languages you can find dozens of examples without too much effort. Of course there can always be disagreement about how close the meanings or pronunciations have to be. But if you set out to find common words in two unrelated languages, you will usually be able to find a lot of them.
> 
> This essay might be of interest to you (it also contains a lot of examples):
> How likely are chance resemblances between languages?


This is quite funny, because even a very small number of elements may entail coincidences. For example, some time ago I made fun with making a language (at that time the task turned out to be too difficult for me, and I gave it up after a half-year), and at the end the language had only a few words, grammatical constructions etc, and one complete text (short, only 200 words; a translation of a fragment of Ivan Bunin's short story). Still, later I realized (only when some months have passed), that it had quite a few of coincidences with natural languages! The most striking ones were my postposition "lar" (meaning "nearly all"; compare with the Turkic sign of the Plural number), and my prefix "e", making various forms of past tenses for verbs (compare with the Greek usage!). Also the word "to", which was an article in my language (just as well as it is an article in Greek). Though I didn't distinguish between definiteness and indefiniteness, instead I distinguished between concreteness and inconcreteness ("do"/"to"; the feature I sometimes miss in the natural languages).


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## osemnais

cherry/Kirsche on one hand and череша(cheresha) on another
all meaning cherry


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## ancalimon

Turkish:  BEN  (I , I AM)
German: ICH BIN

Turkish: BENİM (MINE)
English I'M, MINE


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## OneStroke

Chinese-English:
This one's epic:
Chinese: 魑魅魍魎 - Chimeiwangliang - mythological monster
English: Chimera - monster in Greek mythology

I know this one isn't what you meant, but:
批評 - to criticise - piping. The Cantonese pronunciation is not romanised this way but it is pronounced the same way as in English. Quite a coincidence!

普遍 - pubian - common - pronounced in Cantonese as pou pin, which sounds like 'popular'. Note that both 普羅 puluo and proletariat come from French.

頭髮 - toufa - hair - sounds like toupee

We also end exclamations and interrogative sentences with 'ne' in Chinese.

花卉 - huahui - decorative flower - pronounced in Cantonese as faa wai, which sounds like 'flower'.

Chinese/French:
chou-fleur - cauliflower - lit. cabbage-flower
花椰菜 - huayecai - lit. flower-cabbage (椰菜花 - yecaihua - lit. cabbage-flower - used in Hong Kong.)


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## apmoy70

OneStroke said:


> Chinese-English:
> *頭髮 - toufa - hair - sounds like toupee*


In Greek, colloquially, the tuft of hair or the cowlick, is actually a «τούφα» ['tufa] 
According to prof. Babiniotis it's a Byzantine word, «τοῦφα» ['toufa] a loanword of Germanic origin: Old English, ðūf --> _tuft_, Old Norse, þúfa --> _mound_


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## ancalimon

English: better
Turkish: beter (it means worse)


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## OneStroke

It's a small world! 

Classical Chinese/English:
耳 - er - ear (now 耳朵 erduo. It's still 耳 in Cantonese, but it's not pronounced as 'er').


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## Dragonseed

Taiwanese "hsio" for hot, French "chaud", very similar pronunciation.
Add "tea" in the mix: thė chaud (French) hsio tė (Taiwanese) meaning "hot tea"... Just a coincidence on "hot", and common root for tea - thė -/tė/...

Another close coincidence (g)wa ma hsi (Taiwaneses我也是) = moi aussi (French) "me too!"


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## AquisM

OneStroke said:


> Chinese-English:
> 批評 - to criticise - piping. The Cantonese pronunciation is not romanised this way but it is pronounced the same way as in English. Quite a coincidence!


咁都比你諗到...

Anyway,
Standard Chinese: 是 (Mandarin - shi, Cantonese/Hakka/Teochew - si)
Spanish: Sí
Portuguese: Sim

All meaning _yes_.


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## darush

ancalimon said:


> English: better
> Turkish: beter (it means worse)


Hello ancalimon,
beter like many other words in Turkish is taken from Persian, that is an IE word.
bad=>bad
badtar=> worse
badtarin=> the worst
I think there is a tendency to change most of *'a'* to_ *'e' *_in Turkey Turkish, so ben is also an Persian word in origin
man=> I  (in Azari Turkish I is man also)


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## OneStroke

AquisM said:


> Standard Chinese: 是 (Mandarin - shi, Cantonese/Hakka/Teochew - si)
> Spanish: Sí
> Portuguese: Sim
> 
> All meaning _yes_.



French 'Si' too, but only for negative questions (oui for affirmative questions).
I've checked the WR dictionary for Italian and got sì.
For some reason, according to the WR dictionary, it's not 'si' in Rumanian though!
Then I checked an online Catalan dictionary. Sí.

One more thing: don't forget that we say 係 in Cantonese, which is pronounced 'xi' in PTH. For those who don't read pinyin, that's pronounced like 'see' in English and, therefore, 'si' in French.


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## AquisM

1. I knew that in French, Catalan and Italian _si_ is also used, but I didn't add them because they are all Romance languages and derived from the same root.

2. According to Wiktonary, _yes_ in Romanian is _da_, and is most likely to do with either Romanian's early deviation from Proto-Romance (than the more commonly known ones like Spanish and Italian) or the unique position of Romania and its being in the vicinity of Slavic countries, ultimately borrowing from them, or both.

3. Of course. How could I? Although to be precise, I would say that _xi_ is more like a mixture between _see _and _she_, but still similar to _si_ in the various Romance languages.


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## OneStroke

Hm, that's true. I repeated see, xi and she a few times, and it seems that the position where the tongue touches the roof of the mouth is the closest to the teeth in see and farthest to the teeth in she. That's unlike the Cantonese 's', which is about the same position as the English 'see'. I think this is similar to the PTH 'h' v. the Cantonese 'h'.


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## AquisM

Indeed. See is the most front, then xi, then she. But enough with our little chat, or else we will deviate from the topic too much. To compensate, here are other coincidences:

Fire:
Cantonese: 火 (fo)
Catalan/Romanian: foc


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## OneStroke

For your information, there's already a whole thread about dad/mum. It appears that this is present in most languages. http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=113508&highlight=mama+papa


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## AquisM

Oh, I didn't know that. I've deleted it.


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## ({[|]})

Hello!


Maroseika said:


> Spanish *temprano *and Russian _*рано *_[rano], both mean 'early'.
> Of course, Spanish word contains extra "temp", but in Russian it is also relate to time (темп [temp] - time, tempo).


Another funny one: Spanish "cada" <==> Russian "каждая". Of course, the Russian word has an extra consonant [ж], and the endings of the words are somewhat different in pronounciation, but Russian people, especially children, might (and sometimes do) very erroneously pronounce (especially in hurry) the word "каждая" very close to "када" ("cada" in an approximate Spanish-like writing, exactly with the voiced [d] sound), so guess how the Spanish word "looks for my ear"! 

Well, I don't know if they are cognates... This page ( http://vasmer.narod.ru/p242.htm ) hints that the Russian word "каждый" originally consisted of two parts and meant something like "wherever [present]", referring to Max Vasmer's etymological dictionary. So probably not.

Best!


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## Outsider

According to the DRAE, Spanish _cada_ is ultimately from Greek _katá_ (κατά).


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## tFighterPilot

English "She" and Akkadian /ʃi/ have the same meaning.


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## Gavril

tFighterPilot said:


> English "She" and Akkadian /ʃi/ have the same meaning.



Irish _sí _"she" is pronounced [ʃi] like the English word, but at least the initial _s- _probably has the same etymological origin as English _sh-_. I'm not sure whether the vowels in these two words have a common origin.


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## LiseR

Also the word "cada" seems very close to the colloquial pronounciation of когда (када) = when, although I cannot know the correct word stress in Spanish.


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## Outsider

It's usually a clitic in Spanish (and Portuguese), but when pronounced in isolation I'd say the stress falls on the first syllable.


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## ancalimon

Here are two more coincidences.

In Greek mythology, there is a name;  Gordian. Also another one from Greek history; Dracon.

Gordian supposedly made a Gordian Knot (an unsolvable knot) and Alexander The Great cut it with his sword.
In Turkish, Kördüğüm means "an unsolvable knot"   Kör: blind    düğ: to knot, to tangle   düğüm: knot which is hard to solve

Draco is the first legislator in Greece and he made very harsh laws.
In Turkish töreko means "set laws".   töre: laws that are among the most important ones.    ko: to set, to put


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## HUMBERT0

I don’t know if the German Du is related to the Spanish Tú.  The pronunciation from our perspective is very similar.


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## francisgranada

They are related on the Indoeuropean basis.


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## ancalimon

English elbow ~ Turkish dirsek

While these word are in no way similar, in Turkish "Elbağ" means "connection hand" (connection to hand).

---

Here's another really interesting one:

In Turkish, we call Europe as Avrupa.

It's assumed that Avars take their name from Oghuz Turks.

The Oghuz Turks were the central Turks while the Ogur Turks lived all around the Oghuz Turks. They spread so much that they forgot they were Turks.

The Avars were once Ogurs and they were once Oghuz.

Avar means wanderer, "someone who wonders far away to unexplored lands" in Turkish.

Thus Avrupa<Avaroba<Oguroba<Oghuzoba

Oghuz Oba: The encampment of wondering Oghuz.  (oba: wondering nomads, encampment of wondering nomads)

--

There is an even more interesting coincidence regarding this subject.  The Chinese called Europe as _Ōuzhōu_ 歐洲.
"Ouz Öyü" means "land belonging to Oghuz".

So maybe the Oghuz were in Europe even before the Ogurs.


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## OneStroke

ancalimon said:


> There is an even more interesting coincidence regarding this subject.  The Chinese called Europe as _Ōuzhōu_ 歐洲.
> "Ouz Öyü" means "land belonging to Oghuz".
> 
> So maybe the Oghuz were in Europe even before the Ogurs.



Probably not. I don't know if you know, but 洲 refers to a piece of land surrounded by water (in this case a continent) and not land in general. Also, take a look at this:



			
				《明史‧外國(七)‧意大里亞》 said:
			
		

> 意大里亞，居大西洋中，自古不通中國。萬曆1時，其國人利馬竇至京師，為《萬國全圖》，言天下有五大洲。第一曰亞細亞洲，中凡百餘國，而中國居其一。第二曰*歐羅巴洲*，中凡七餘國，而意大里亞居其一。第三曰利未亞洲，亦百餘國。第四曰亞墨利加洲，地更大，以境土相連，分為南北二洲。最後得墨瓦臘泥加洲為第五。而域中大地盡矣。其說荒渺莫考，然其國人充斥中土，則其地固有之，不可誣也。



Therefore, 'Ōuzhōu' is probably an abbreviation of this 'Ōuluóbāzhōu'.

Chinese/English:
鯊魚 (shāyú) - shark


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## mataripis

mataripis said:


> 1.)Tagalog: Paumanhin (patience)     Greek: Ipomoni       2.)Tagalog: Ibigay     English: Give  ( Read this backward and it  become "evig")     3.) Espaniol: Tono       Tagalog: tunog(sound)


In Latin "ET" is "AT" in Tagalog. The "Alati" of Greek is "Salt" in English while in Tagalog it is "ASIN" but the saltiness is "ALAT". Greek light is "FOS" but in Tagalog it become "APOY"/ The "Katapatisis" of Greek has same sound and meaning in Tagalog "Katapat"(good challenger).the LILAC of English is the same color in Tagalog called "LILA"(violet).The English "altitude" can be "Taas" in Tagalog.  The word "Valley" is "LIBIS" in Tagalog. The word "Wave" is "Alon" in Tagalog and the cause of waves is the magnetic field or gravitional pull of the Moon which is "LUNA" in Spanish.  Star is Estrella in Spanish/Estella in Greek and "Tala" in Tagalog.


----------



## Konanen

Sorry for the following little off-topic'ish reply:



darush said:


> Hello ancalimon,
> beter like many other words in Turkish is taken from Persian, that is an IE word.
> bad=>bad
> badtar=> worse
> badtarin=> the worst
> I think there is a tendency to change most of *'a'* to_ *'e' *_in Turkey Turkish, so ben is also an Persian word in origin
> man=> I  (in Azari Turkish I is man also)



Dear darush,

please allow me to correct as far as I believe to know:

"من" ("_I_") in Persian is actually a* borrowing *from a Turkic language.

Turkish "*ben*" and its related words in other Turkic languages (_män, mən, b__ən, beng_, ...) derive from Proto-Turkic *_me__ŋ_
This is in accordance with every suffix of the 1st person starting with -m(-). There is also an Old Turkic Orkhon-inscription of the 8th century, which starts with "Bilge Tonyuquq *ben*..."

Moving on, the Persian language is an Indo-Aryan language. The word "*I*" probably was in PIE **éǵh₂ *(Latin → ego; German → ich; Anglo-Saxon → *ih/*ic; ...).
The palatovelar *ǵ *in the satem languages (Persian, Kurdish, Avestian,...) changed into an alveolar fricative (ǵ → z).
We can see such a word in the Kurdish language: 
"ez" means "I"

I assume, that Persian **az interfered with از (az), meaning"from". So they borrowed, due to the nearness, the Azəri word for "I", that is "mən".


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## Ironicus

_Mez_ and _chabi_ are Indian borrowings from Portuguese, who had factories at Goa, Daman and Diu. 
Accidental resemblances are amusing, but I find much more interesting the sort of thing where people can say things in one language and be properly understood by speakers of another language, even when the two have been separated for a long time. I give two examples:
1. A Scottish girl, asking me for some rope, said "See us a bitty tow". An Afrikaner, hearing her, remarked that in Afrikaans that would be "gee ons 'n bietjie tou".
2. In Gujarati there is a saying "jyaN madh, tyaN maakhi" - where there is honey, there is a fly. It sounds very similar in Russian.


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## Outsider

Ironicus said:


> _Mez_ and _chabi_ are Indian borrowings from Portuguese, who had factories at Goa, Daman and Diu.


What do they mean?


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## Ironicus

Mez is a table; chaabi is a key. In Gujarati these words appear as _mej_ and _chaavi_. I've heard Tamils in South Africa use _saavi _for a key but I don't think this is the word in India: perhaps a Tamil speaker can enlighten me.


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## Outsider

Ah, yes, like _mesa_ and _chave_! I guessed the first one, but was scratching my head about the latter. Thanks for the reply.


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## aruniyan

Ironicus said:


> Mez is a table; chaabi is a key. In Gujarati these words appear as _mej_ and _chaavi_. I've heard Tamils in South Africa use _saavi _for a key but I don't think this is the word in India: perhaps a Tamil speaker can enlighten me.



yes Saavi is a loan word,

similarly there is* Veedu(House)* which i think had come from Arabic*(Bayt*) 

The original Tamil word is *Kudi, Kudil* looks related *Hut*(English) and there is also  *Manai*(residing place/house) looks related to *Manzel* (Arabic) ?


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## mataripis

Outsider said:


> Ah, yes, like _mesa_ and _chave_! I guessed the first one, but was scratching my head about the latter. Thanks for the reply.


 The Bisaya Language has word "Yabe" for key.


aruniyan said:


> yes Saavi is a loan word,
> 
> similarly there is* Veedu(House)* which i think had come from Arabic*(Bayt*)
> 
> The original Tamil word is *Kudi, Kudil* looks related *Hut*(English) and there is also  *Manai*(residing place/house) looks related to *Manzel* (Arabic) ?


The word "house" came from Aramaic letter "B" read as "Beth'.The word "Kudi" of Tamil is related to Tagalog word "Kuta" (Fortress) and "Manai" has counterpart in Tagalog word for "bahay" (house).


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## aruniyan

mataripis said:


> The word "house" came from Aramaic letter "B" read as "Beth'.The word "Kudi" of Tamil is related to Tagalog word "Kuta" (Fortress) and "Manai" has counterpart in Tagalog word for "bahay" (house).


In Tamil fortress is kOttai sounds like Tagalog word "Kuta" (Fortress), 

but Kudi(Family), Kudisai,Kudil(Hut), Kudai(shade/umbrella), Kuli(hole) etc.. refers to the places to Get Inside.


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## fdb

man is from the Old Persian genitive singular mana. Middle Persian still distinguishes nominative an “I” and oblique  man “me”. In New Persian the old oblique has been generalised.


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## 南島君

mataripis said:


> The word "Kudi" of Tamil is related to Tagalog word "Kuta" (Fortress) ......





aruniyan said:


> In Tamil fortress is kOttai sounds like Tagalog word "Kuta" (Fortress),



They are certainly of loanword relation, which do not fit to the discussion of this thread, cf. Malay _kota_ "fotress/town", and Sanskrit _kuța_ "town/wall/fortress" according to this site.


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## Konanen

@fdb
So do you propose an unrelated development of Farsi:man <> ben:Turkish?


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## fdb

exactly. they are not even all that similar.


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## francisgranada

The personal pronouns show some similaraties even in languages that belong to different families:

minä "I" in Finnish; man, mine, mene ... in the IE languages (even if not in nominative)
te "you" in Hungarian; tu, du, thou, ty, ti ... in the IE languages
mi "we" in Hungarian; my, mi ... in Slavic languages

P.S. "I" in Hungarian is _*én*_, a bit similar to the Middle Persian _an _(if I've understood well the previous discussion)


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## Konanen

fdb said:


> exactly. they are not even all that similar.



Well, that is interesting.
What do you propose for Kurmancî "ez", then? PIE: *ég´h2- ? (I don't have the characters right now. You will know what I mean, check my previous post.)


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## Ironicus

This is interesting.
At around 4 or 5 months, many babies will produce a gurgle that sounds exactly like this PIE word to me - not that I can claim to have heard the original. It could well be that it is from this source that we get the word itself. There are several other words that seem to have their origins in babbling, and I am sure there are more than a few neurolinguists working on the question.


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## fdb

Konanen said:


> Well, that is interesting.
> What do you propose for Kurmancî "ez", then? PIE: *ég´h2- ? (I don't have the characters right now. You will know what I mean, check my previous post.)



Yes, this is the word in most Iranian languages: Avestan azəm, Parthian az etc.


francisgranada said:


> The personal pronouns show some similaraties even in languages that belong to different families:
> 
> minä "I" in Finnish; man, mine, mene ... in the IE languages (even if not in nominative)
> te "you" in Hungarian; tu, du, thou, ty, ti ... in the IE languages
> mi "we" in Hungarian; my, mi ... in Slavic languages
> 
> P.S. "I" in Hungarian is _*én*_, a bit similar to the Middle Persian _an _(if I've understood well the previous discussion)



In most languages the pronouns are very short words. But this means that from a purely mathematical point of view the probability of random coincidence between two unrelated languages is fairly high.


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## Konanen

fdb said:


> Yes, this is the word in most Iranian languages: Avestan azəm, Parthian az etc.



I really find it fascinating, therefore I will be asking (I love etymology ):

Is the origin of (Old) Persian _an _known? How come, most of the other Aryan languages have a cognate of *éǵh₂- and Farsi did and does not (anymore_?_)?

Oh, I don't know, have I provided this yet? I guess not:

Turkish "*dik* kafalı" (stubborn, lit.: _erect headed_) vs. German "*Dick*kopf" (a stubborn one, lit.: _thick-head_)

Although not in the meaning *dik *<> *dick*, adjected with the word "_head_", both refer to stubbornness.


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## ancalimon

Another probable coincidence in Turkish.

Gather : Getir (To take something or someone to a certain place, to bring)


Here is a funny one: 

Alligator : eli götür (chops off hand, gulps down hand, snaps the hand off)


Konanen said:


> Oh, I don't know, have I provided this yet? I guess not:
> 
> Turkish "*dik* kafalı" (stubborn, lit.: _erect headed_) vs. German "*Dick*kopf" (a stubborn one, lit.: _thick-head_)
> 
> Although not in the meaning *dik *<> *dick*, adjected with the word "_head_", both refer to stubbornness.


There are other coincidences in this coincidence.

Dik also means the following in Turkish:

Erect, perpendicular
To plant inside something.

Not to mention "dick" is "sik" in Turkish.


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## Encolpius

*a *= Portuguese definite article [Romance origin]
*a *= Hungarian definite article [Ugro-Finnic origin]


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## Ironicus

And Aramaic definite article (Semitic) but it's placed at the end of the word - like the Bulgarian and Romanian definite articles.


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## Konanen

If we are at definite articles:

ال is the Arabic definite article (pronounced "al" in MSA/Fus'ha and _"el"/"il"_ in most of the dialects) [Semitic language family]
_el _→ Spanish def. art. masc._, il_ → Italian def. art. m.(, _le_ → French def. art. m.) [Romance language family]


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## tFighterPilot

I always assumed it's not a coincidence, that it's related to the Arab occupation of Spain.


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## Outsider

It's hard to be sure whether there was any reinforcement from Arabic, but the fact is that very similar forms exist in all the Romance languages.


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## fdb

tFighterPilot said:


> I always assumed it's not a coincidence, that it's related to the Arab occupation of Spain.



Spanish "el" comes from Latin "ille", as do the related forms in other Romance languages. It has nothing to do with Arabic.


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## Konanen

Yes, that is, what literature has taught me, too. Romance def. art. are derived from Latin forms of ille/-a


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## Encolpius

occur = English
起こる [okoru] = Japanese = to occur


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## ancalimon

Chinese = 土耳其
Turkish = Türk

The thing is that the Chinese word means "wall builder" (duvarcı~tuarjı) in Turkish.


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## Gavril

Old English _se _"that" (masc. sg.)
Finnish _se _"that, it"

I think it's common, cross-linguistically, for demonstrative pronouns to have a coronal consonant like [s] in the onset, so arguably this isn't much of a coincidence.


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## Konanen

The following words mean "this", if not refered otherwise. They all contain a coronal consonant in the beginning:

French: *c*e [sə]
Turkish: *ş*u [ʃu] → that (_slightly:_ pej.)
Arabic: هذا ['hæː*ð*æː] (in other dialects: ده [dæh], or ذا [ðæː])
German: *d*ieser ['diːzɐ]
Hebrew: *ז*ה [ze]
Scottish-/Irish-Gaelic:* s*eo [ʃoː]
Icelandic: *þ*essi ['θɛsːɪ][/plain][/quote]


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## Encolpius

*ne *= Czech - Don't (Slavic origin)
*ne *= Hungarian - Don't (Ugro-Finnic origin)


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## Gavril

Konanen said:


> The following words mean "this", if not refered otherwise. They all contain a coronal consonant in the beginning:
> 
> French: *c*e [sə]
> Turkish: *ş*u [ʃu] → that (_slightly:_ pej.)
> Arabic: هذا ['hæː*ð*æː] (in other dialects: ده [dæh], or ذا [ðæː])
> German: *d*ieser ['diːzɐ]
> Hebrew: *ז*ה [ze]
> Scottish-/Irish-Gaelic:* s*eo [ʃoː]
> Icelandic: *þ*essi ['θɛsːɪ]



Also,

Japanese _so- _“that” (_sono, sore _etc.)
Akkadian _šu / ši _“that”
Sumerian _re / še_ “that”
Finnish _tämä _”this”, _tuo _"that"
Tagalog _ito _“this”, _dito _"here"

et (probably) cetera.


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## Ironicus

The phenomenon of coronal or similar consonants in pointing-words probably arises from tongue-pointing. If your hands are busy and you try to point, you will point with your tongue, and your tongue will move to the front half of your mouth to do so.


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## tFighterPilot

Gavril said:


> Japanese _so- _“that” (_sono, sore _etc.)
> Akkadian _šu / ši _“that”
> Sumerian _re / še_ “that”
> Finnish _tämä _”this”, _tuo _"that"
> Tagalog _ito _“this”, _dito _"here"


Obviously, in the case of Hebrew, Arabic and Akkadian it isn't a coincidence.


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## Konanen

Oh, I remember something:

*a kiss*:

Arabic: بوسة ['buːsä] (< ?)
German: Bussi ['bʊsiˑ] (→ "a small-sweet kiss (on the cheek)", < pusa (slaw.) = kiss)


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## Outsider

And in French *baiser* [beze].


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## Konanen

And also "bisou" as a noun.


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## tFighterPilot

English\French\Italian *Antique*
Hebrew\Arabic *עתיק/عتيق* *'atiq*


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## Outsider

"Sheriff" in English and "sharif" in Arabic. Incidentally, we spell both words the same in Portuguese, _xerife_.


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## Gavril

tFighterPilot said:


> English\French\Italian *Antique*
> Hebrew\Arabic *עתיק/عتيق* *'atiq*



Does _'atiq _mean "antique" in the sense of "old, ancient" (adjective) or in the sense of "item sold at an antique store" (noun)?


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## ancalimon

Turkish *Atık* (something thrown out of the house, something that is going to be thrown out, junk, scrap, dreg, waste)


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## AutumnOwl

Konanen said:


> *a kiss*:
> 
> Arabic: بوسة ['buːsä] (< ?)
> German: Bussi ['bʊsiˑ] (→ "a small-sweet kiss (on the cheek)", < pusa (slaw.) = kiss)


You also have _puss_ in Swedish and _pusu_ in Finnish, meaning kiss/peck


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## tFighterPilot

Gavril said:


> Does _'atiq _mean "antique" in the sense of "old, ancient" (adjective) or in the sense of "item sold at an antique store" (noun)?


In the sense of "Old, ancient". I don't think it can be used as a noun actually.


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## darush

Konanen said:


> *a kiss*:
> 
> Arabic: بوسة ['buːsä] (< ?)
> German: Bussi ['bʊsiˑ] (→ "a small-sweet kiss (on the cheek)", < pusa (slaw.) = kiss)


بوس/buse/ or بوس/bus/ is a Persian word!


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## rayloom

Arabic false cognates that I know (also thanks to the forum and wikipedia):

ArD "earth": Earth (German Aarde)
ðayl (dhayl) "tail": Tail
nabil "noble": noble
sharif "honorable" (a title also given to tribal protectors, also later for governors of certain regions, see here & here): sheriff
farw/fira' "fur": fur
kahf "cave": cave
ṭawil (colloquial verb ṭaal "to become tall, long") : tall
tarquwa (Plural taraqi) (collar bone): trachea
baq "mite": bug
kafara (to cover/hide): cover
kama "like": Spanish como (like)
anta "you": Japanese anata/anta "you"

French Nuque (from Arabic nukha'): English Neck (from PGmc)


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## francisgranada

rayloom said:


> French Nuque (from Arabic nukha'): English Neck (from PGmc)


And Hungarian "nyak" ...


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## Konanen

darush said:


> بوس/buse/ or بوس/bus/ is a Persian word!


Interesting!
Is the Arabic بوسة a loan of which?


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## fdb

I think the words for "kiss" with initial b- are onomatopoetic. They crop up spontaneously in a large number of unrelated languages.


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## Usuzumiiro

Some of my examples from a part of the Japanese and Finnish language guides I write.
(I myself am Japanese-Finnish BTW. ).

Example of words written same (pronunciation may be a little different):
                                             Finnish meaning                  Japanese (only one given)
Sora -------------------------------   Gravel                         Sky　（空）
Himo -------------------------------  Lust                            Cord　（紐）
Hinata ------------------------------- Tow                           Sunshine　（日向）
Kanki ------------------------------- Bar                             Dry season (etc.)　（乾季）
Kenkä ------------------------------- Shoe                          Quarrel　（喧嘩）
Koko ------------------------------- Whole                         Here　（ここ）
Sakka ------------------------------- Dregs                         Author (for etc. See above)　（作家）
Hikari ------------------------------- Nerd                          Light　（光）
Toki -------------------------------   Sure                           Time　（時）
Kutsu ------------------------------- Call                          Shoe　（靴）
Suru  -------------------------------- Sorrow                     (to do) （する）
Rikka -------------------------------- Mote                       First day of summer （立夏）
Sato   -------------------------------- Crop                        Villiage (郷）
Sakki -------------------------------- Gang                        Some time ago （さっき）
Hima -------------------------------- Home                       Free time （暇）
Suku -------------------------------- Family                      Fond of （好く） and other meanings
Aho  -------------------------------- Glade                        Idiot (アホ） dialectal
Hiki  -------------------------------- Sweat                        Backing, pull
Tämä ------------------------------- This                           Ball (魂)
… etc (example, kui, kun, sai, tai, kai, hana, doku, haiku, kaiken).
Some words which may sound like Japanese words: Takana (behind), kaikki (all), 
nami (sweets; means ”wave” in Japanese).

Some words which sound like Japanese in different forms (Finnish grammar):
“Suki” (a form of ”sukia” – ”to groom”) – but the Japanese word 好き (suki – ”to like”), sounds like ”ski” in standard Japanese (and the Finnish ”u” and Japanese ”u” are different).
“Kuroi” (a form of ”kuroa” – ”to gather”) sounds like Japanese 黒い (kuroi – ”black”)
“Teki” (a form of “tehdä” – ”to do”) sounds like Japanese 敵 (teki – ”enemy”)

Other things:
In Finnish, another word for pajamas is ”yöpuku” (”yö” means ”night” and ”puku” means ”attire”)
In Japanese the word for night is 夜（よる、yoru) and the kanji also has a on'yomi reading of ”ya” and ”yo” (although pronounced differently form the Finnish yö).
In Japanese  the word 服 (ふく、fuku) means ”clothes” and sounds like ”huku” and is somewhat similar to Finnish ”puku” in spelling.

Here are many words for “bitch” (as in spiteful woman) in Japanese, some are すべた (subeta)、じゃじゃうま (jajauma)、阿婆擦れ (abazure) and　尼 (ama), the last two having many spellings.
Is it common to say something like この尼！(kono ama!) when calling a woman a “bitch”.
In Finnish, there are also quite a few words for it. A common word is ämmä which sounds like Japanese ”ama” and can translate as ”bitch”, ”old hag”, etc...


----
Some more explaining... 

“Sora” means “gravel” in Finnish, while in Japanese 空（そら、sora) means “sky”. While the “R” in both sounds kind of like an “L” sound, there is difference between them.
Of course in Japanese, “R” is not rolled by the tongue, and it comes out naturally sounding near the letter “L” (sola). In Finnish, the “R” sound is rolled (the tongue moves up) more so depending on its position in a word, as in this word.

“Kut-su” meaning “call” in Finnish and 靴 (k(u)-ts(u)) meaning “shoe” in Japanese is not pronounced the same. The “U” sound in “ku” in Japanese (compare the “coo” in English which is somewhat similar sometimes, like in “cooker”) is short and does not sound like the Finnish “U” (which sounds like the “U” in the word “you”, try pronouncing the “oo” in the English word “cool”). The sounds are also split. The Finnish is “kut-su”. 
The Japanese is “ku-tsu”.

“Toki” means “sure” in Finnish, in Japanese 時（とき、toki) means “time” (as in a moment of time).
Written as 朱鷺 (etc.) it means an ibis bird.
ここ（此処、”koko”) not to be confused with 個々 (“koko/individual”) is a place word in Japanese, and is often translated as “here”. In Finnish it means “entire” or “size”.

“Sakka” in Finnish means “dregs” or “lees”. In Japanese it means “author” when written as 作家,
“last summer” when written as 昨夏 or　”writing songs” when written as 作歌.
“Hinata” means “to tow” in Finnish. In Japanese　日向（ひなた、hinata) means “sunshine”.
光（ひかり、hikari) means “light” in Japanese, while in Finnish it is slang for “swot/nerd” from “hikipinko”. Note the differences between Japanese and Finnish “R”.
Kenkä (meaning ”shoe”) in Finnish sounds like 喧嘩 (kenka); a quarrel.

Despite a few similar sound patterns (hi, na, ki (k)ka, (t)ta, su, k(ko) mi, ou, ku, etc.) in small words, there is absolutely no relation between the languages. Finnish is a language comparable to Estonian in grammar and belongs in that language family (it is not Indo-European).
Japanese is a isolate language with no relation to any other language, though shares some similar  
grammar to Korean.

The issue is they carry a lot of the same sounds and also because Finnish grammar is complex and has 15 cases, the words often change, and in another form they make sound Japanese-like while the word in the simple case does not. Example “Pik-ku-ha-i-ka-ra” (pikkuhaikara), “na-ka-ta” (nakata),
“hak-ku-ri” (hakkuri), etc. Some other sounds include the differences between “ko” and “kou” in pronunciation which both languages are similar in, and alike sounds.
Some say that Finnish sounds like a Japanized European language, or what would happen if one puts Japanese, Italian and German together (in sound).

---
Russian яма (jama/yama) -- "pit" sounds like Japanese 山 (yama) -- "mountain".
Никуда (nikuda) -- "nowhere" sounds like 肉だ (niku da) -- "it's meat".

P.S. I know many Hawaiian words which are "false friends" of Japanese and/or Finnish words. I can post them if anyone is intrested...


----------



## rayloom

@Usuzumiiro
Thanks for the extensive list (I'm interested in Japanese) 
But the thread is actually about false cognates (quite different from false friends), which are words similar in pronunciation AND meaning in 2 languages, which aren't cognates (not from the same origin). 
Like Arabic _anta_ "you" and Japanese _anata/anta_ which also means "you". The 2 words are similar in meaning and pronunciation, but have different origins. Also Japanese namae and English name, which are also similiar in meaning and pronunciation, but have different origins.
Otherwise, there are much more false friends between different languages.


----------



## Usuzumiiro

Oh, I am such a baka. (Hazukashii...) I'm sorry. My fault, I see. Thank you for the note. I must have read the post wrong... Then in that case, perhaps I can suggest Japanese 切る (kiru) which basically means "cut" but also can mean "kill" (similar to the word 殺す (korosu)), it therefore has similar pronunciation AND meaning as the English word "kill" (kiru --> "kil(u)). Although its a bit sloppy compared to your example. Also the word for "name" seems to alike in many languages from what I seen... Also I think the Finnish and Japanese word for "bitch" sound quite similar (as I posted in the previous post). (Can use 尼 （あま,ama in Japanese and can useämmä in Finnish for roughly the same meaning -- like in "出て行け！このクソ尼！二度と俺の前に姿を見せるな！").) Wanted to suggest Japanese 霞（かすみ,kasumi) -- "haze; mist" with Finnish sumu -- "mist/fog" -- not similar enough in pronunciation enough. 

兄 (ani) (兄貴/aniki) -- yet another word for "elder brother" in Japanese and Greenlandic "ani" which also means "elder brother (a girl's). Thanks again~


----------



## darush

Konanen said:


> Interesting!
> Is the Arabic بوسة a loan of which?


Hi Konanea,
yes, I think so.
by the way, I should apologize for my typo in post #18. the first بوس should be changed to بوسه .


----------



## aruniyan

Dravidian Tamil - *Vilakku* - Lamp/Clear off
IE - *Fulgere*, *Bleach*



Tamil *Vayal* (Farm)

Latin *Ville* 

The best coincidence.


----------



## OneStroke

ancalimon said:


> Chinese = 土耳其
> Turkish = Türk
> 
> The thing is that the Chinese word means "wall builder" (duvarcı~tuarjı) in Turkish.



Actually, I think 土耳其 (Tǔ'ěrqí) is clearly from 'Turkey' (how's the Turkish word for Turkey pronounced?) since the last character is pronounced 'kei4' in Cantonese.  

By the way, the Chinese word for 'Turk' is 突厥 (Tūjué; the last charcter is pronounced 'kyut3' in Cantonese). This transcription goes back over a millennium, so the strange sound is inevitable.


----------



## ancalimon

Türkiye: http://translate.google.com/#tr|en|t%C3%BCrkiye

Duvarcı: http://translate.google.com/#tr|en|duvarc%C4%B1



Here is another rather hilarious coincidence.

Basque language - Wikipedia

The Basque language is called "euskara".

In Turkish the word you hear means "the black speech" ~ "the black dialect".  
Under certain conditions, it might also mean "the northern speech" or "the western speech" because colours also represent directions among Turks.

... Of course it wouldn't really be hilarious if there really was a connection between the Tursks and Turks.


----------



## ancalimon

Another really funny coincidence which reminds me of the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"

The Japanese word Kimono is also a Turkish sentence meaning "Let me wear that thing".

giy: to wear
giyim: clothing
giyeyim (spoken as giiyim): Let me wear
onu: that thing, it


----------



## ahmedcowon

English: Table
Arabic: Tawla طاولة


----------



## fdb

This one is not actually a coincidence. English “table” and Arabic ṭāwula (or ṭāwila) both derive from Latin tabula, the Arabic presumably via Italian tavola.


----------



## ancalimon

Are these coincidences?

Turkish:

topla: gather, assemble, to put things in an orderly fashion on a place or object (like to put things on (or around) a table, or a chest, or a room.  So, a gathering would be "toplantı").
tavla: backgammon, to fool someone by laying a trap (the same meaning in Mongolian)  (the aim of tavla~backgammon is the fool your opponent by laying a trap & you have to gather the stones before the opponent)

tavla - Wiktionary

getir: gather

wonder (English)  ~  Andır (Turkish) : remember, resemble, remind of  (from "an" meaning "to call a moment or someone or something to mind")


----------



## jakubisek

I've always been told Urdu mez is a loanword from Portuguese - is it not?!


----------



## trigel

Hebrew כֹה (ko; 'so/thus') and Japanese こう (kō; 'this way').
Hebrew הזמין (hizmin; 'to make an appointment, to order (a product or service)'), Korean 주문 (jumun 'an order').

EDIT: More Hebrew coincidences and possible-coincidences at your door!
מה (ma) and Korean 뭐 (mwo), both "what"
דרך (derekh) and German durch, both "through" (phono-semantic matching to Yiddish דורך?)
לבן (lavan) 'white' and "albinism"
עבר (cross over, pass) and "over"


----------



## fdb

jakubisek said:


> I've always been told Urdu mez is a loanword from Portuguese - is it not?!



Correct.


----------



## origumi

tFighterPilot said:


> English\French\Italian *Antique*
> Hebrew\Arabic *עתיק/عتيق* *'atiq*


I suspect it's not a coincidence. The meaning of `atiq = _antique_ is under Aramaic influence (see for example the book of Daniel), different from the Biblical Hebrew `atiq = _of large quantity_ (for example in Isaiah). Aramaic could be influences by Latin or maybe another IE language.

`atiq is also a noun, at least the feminine form `atiqa, see for example רשות העתיקות.


----------



## Youngfun

Italian: *man mano* (step by step, progressively)
Chinese: *慢慢地* _màn man de_ (slowly)

Not exactly the same... but close enough.


----------



## apmoy70

Gr. «σκατούλα» [ska'tula] --> _little sh*t_
It. " scatola" ['skatola] --> _box_

Anc. Gr. greeting «οὖλε» hoûlĕ --> _be well_
Eng. "hello"

Gr. «βραβείο» [vra'vi.o] (Anc. Gr. «βραβεῖον» brăbeîŏn) --> _prize_
It. exclamation "bravo, -a" --> _well done_

Anc. Gr. «γὲ» gè (emphatic particle) --> _at least_
Ger. "ja"

Anc. Gr. «μαδαρός» mădarós --> _bald_
Lat. "maturus" --> _ripe_


----------



## Gavril

Japanese _niwa _"garden"
Slovene _njiva_ "(cultivated) field", Russian _niva_ "cornfield", etc.

Of course, gardens and fields can be very different things, so this isn't necessarily such a good match.


----------



## Dragonseed

And in many languages, 'ma' or 'mam' will mean "mother"... (or variations of the vowel: Mu, Amu, etc.)
Relics of our universal "natural" language (if this existas at all), or a trick played my the mothers of old days because "mamamamam" is probably the first sound a baby will ever utter, anywhere in the world? "Listen: he/she called my name!!!!"


----------



## Rallino

In Turkish, mother = *anne*, father = *baba*.
Babies learn to say _father_ at first. ;p


----------



## trigel

Hebrew תָּלָה (tala): he hung (something), Korean 달다 (talda): hang by tying/strapping, append (something).
Even more strikingly, causal dependence ("X depends on Y") can be expressed by these verbs, in the form of "X is hung on Y" in both languages.


----------



## ancalimon

Saw this and it occurred to me: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2660879

http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=abound&allowed_in_frame=0

Abound: early 14c., from Old French abonder "to abound, be abundant, *come together in great numbers*" (12c.), from Latin abundare "overflow, run over," from Latin ab- "off" (see ab-) + undare "rise in a wave," from unda "water, wave" (see water (n.)). Related: Abounded; abounding.


Turkic:

ab: come together, hunt, chase
on: great number, many ("onlar" meaning "they" comes from this "on".  "On" also means "number ten".  It also means "to crush"

So

abon: come together in great numbers  & come together and crush.

Also 

aban: to try to overpower someone.


----------



## Gavril

Not a semantic match, but

English _rinse_ < Fr. _rincer_ < Latin _recentiare_
Icelandic _hreinsa_ "cleanse" < _hreinn_ "pure" < Gernanic * _xrain-_


----------



## vishr

I'm new here (this is my first post), but I've been looking around this forum for a long time. This topic particularly sparked my interest because I was just thinking about this a few days ago, so I decided to post my thoughts on it.

I've noticed a few similarities that don't seem to be connected. For example, Tamil நீ (ni) = you, Mandarin 你 (nǐ) = you
Also, this is kind of a stretch, but there's Spanish Yo = I and Chinese 我 (Wǒ) = I.
Even more of a stretch: Chinese has a question particle "ma" (吗), which is attached to the end of a sentence to make it a question. Thus, 你是中国人. (Nǐ shì zhōngguó rén.) = You are a Chinese person,你是中国人吗？ (Nǐ shì zhōngguó rén ma?) = Are you a Chinese person?
In Tamil, there is the tendency to add an -ஆ  (-aa) suffix to a sentence to make it a question when speaking informally. Thus, உன் பெயர் காயத்ரி. (Un peyar Gaayathri) = Your name is Gayatri. உன் பெயர் காயத்ரியா? (Un peyar Gaayathriyaa?) = Is your name Gayatri?

I grew up around Tamil in my house (so I understand it), but unfortunately I don't speak it. There is one person here on this post who speaks Tamil (Aruniyan), so if he would be so kind as to correct any mistakes I made...?

Thanks,
vishr


----------



## ancalimon

Turkic languages also have question particles at the end of sentences like mı, mi, mu, mü ,ma, mo. I guess that could be some really ancient connection. Still since we have no way of knowing this I guess they are coincidences.


----------



## aruniyan

Dear Vishr,

Yes, in Tamil, *ஆ-*aa as suffix for making questions, avanaa? is it him? , appadiyaa? is it so? etc...
-aa as suffix is also used for negation, for ex.. _illaa_(without there), _varaa_(without coming), kaanaa(without seeing).

The root sound  *aa*(long a) should have a primitive meaning of "*unknown"  *_and so has additional meaning of_* valuable/sacred,* as I can see this in many words in other distant languages, in Tamil its used as suffix for questioning and negations.

Sanskrit has prefix a- for negation.


----------



## puny_god

Here is one that really amused me the first time I learned of it:

Japanese: バラバラ (scattered, disconnected)
Filipino: barabara (haphazard)
I could never get a Filipino teacher to explain how we came to use this word


----------



## Danae.husak

In modern Greek " ματι " means eye ...['ma·ti ] and it sounds similarly to the Malay/ Indonesian word " mata " with the same meaning !!

In Greenlandic " ananara" means mommy...yani annecim...maybe there is a conection...lost in time (-15.000) somewhere in central Siberia...


----------



## Gavril

Danae.husak said:


> In modern Greek " ματι " means eye ...['ma·ti ] and it sounds similarly to the Malay/ Indonesian word " mata " with the same meaning !!



Interestingly, the Greek word seems (if Wiktionary is reliable) to come from an aphetic form of _om*máti*on < ómma _"eye".

Another pair of false "friends":

- *veto *(found in English and many other European languages) is from the 1sg. present form of Lat. *vetare *"forbid"

- Finnish *veto *"pulling"(from the verb *vetää *"pull") has a range of other physical and metaphorical meanings such as "traction", "strength", etc., and it doesn't seem implausible that it could be extended to the meaning "veto" as well (in the sense of "taking ['pulling'] a proposal out of consideration")


----------



## Rethliopuks

something I remembered:
1.Japanese _perapera_, adverb meaning speaking fluently. Something looks like blah blah....
Japanese has only a _r_ with sound near to l.

2.Japanese sentence _soudesune_ can mean "I agree/you are right/yes, it is", consists of _sou_ "thus", _desu_ "be" in a polite form, _ne_ interjection.
While the T'ientsin dialect of Mandarin: 说的是呢, with same meaning and almost the same pronunciation, but formed from:说-say/speak, V的-that/what is Ved, 是-judging verb and can mean "is right" here, 呢-interjection. (Sorry but not very clear about T'ientsin pronunciation)


----------



## arielipi

Gavril said:


> Interestingly, the Greek word seems (if Wiktionary is reliable) to come from an aphetic form of _om*máti*on < ómma _"eye".


In hebrew the word for eye is עין  *a*yin.


----------



## luitzen

I used to think that West Frisian _faam _(pronounciation /fa:m/, Dutch/Frisian names derived from it: Famke/Femke/Fimke, meaning (cute) little girl) was a French loanword (we have many French loanwords) from _femme _(pronounciation /fam/). In North Frisian, however, they have the form _foom_ and it appears they're both from Old Frisian _fāmne.

_


			
				http://taaldacht.nl/2010/09/07/faam/ said:
			
		

> Eerst vraag ik uw geduld voor enkele woorden over de herkomst van _faam_. Want waarom is het in mijn ogen een bijzonder Fries woord? Wel, in de tijd dat er nog Oudgermaans werd gesproken was dit een wijdverbreid woord, maar tegenwoordig is het alleen nog in het Fries te vinden. Het is een kostbaar overblijfsel. _Faam_ komt van Oudfries _fāmne_ ‘jonge vrouw, maagd’. In de zustertalen bestonden Oudsaksisch _fêmia_ ‘jonge vrouw’, Oudengels _fǽmne _‘jonge vrouw’ en Oudnoords _feima_ ‘verlegen meisje’. Ze gaan allemaal terug op Oudgermaans _*faimnjō_ ‘herderin’, een vrouwelijke vorm bij een verder niet overgeleverd _*faiman_ ‘herder’. Het woord heeft niets met Latijn _fēmina_ te maken, al is de gelijkenis groot.
> 
> Overigens, hoewel Oudnoords _feima_ is uitgestorven heeft het nog wel geleid tot hedendaags IJslands _feiminn_ ‘verlegen’ (eigenlijk ‘zoals een meisje’) en van daaruit _feimni_ ‘verlegenheid’.





			
				Translation said:
			
		

> First I'd like to ask for your patience for some words about the origins of _faam_; because why do I think it's such a special Frisian word? Well, this was a widely used word when Old Germanic was still spoken, but nowadays it can only be found back in Frisian; it is a valuable remnant. _Faam_ is derived from Old Frisian _fāmne_ ‘young woman, virgin’. In its sister languages there were the forms _fêmia _(Old Saxon) ‘young woman’, _fǽmne _(Old English) ‘young woman’ and _feima_ (Old Norse) ‘shy girl’. They're all derived from Old Germanic _*faimnjō_ ‘herdess’, a female form of otherwise not survived _*faiman_ ‘herder’. Even though they look very similar the word is not related to Latin _fēmina_ at all.
> 
> Even though Old Norse _feima_ has gone extinct, it still lives on in present Icelandic _feiminn_ ‘shy’ (actually ‘like a girl’) and from that to _feimni_ ‘shyness’.



Maybe I should put this on Wiktionary.


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## Sempervirens

Moro12 said:


> I am interested in the rare phenomenon of "word coincidence" in different languages.



Ciao! Confrontando il tema del perfetto latino dell'attuale verbo andare italiano con il corrispondente verbo giapponese　行く , ma dà di che pensare!

Comunque, consiglio vivamente la lettura di  _L'Unità d'origine del linguaggio_ di Alfredo Trombetti. Se non altro per saperne di più.
Saluti


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## Gavril

I keep finding/remembering more pairs for this thread:


English *ammo *_< ammunition_< Latin _ad- _"to" + _munitio _"fortification"

Finnish *ammukset *"ammunition" < plural of _ammus _"projectile, shell" < _ampua _"to shoot"


----------



## SuperXW

English: book
Chinese: 薄 (Cantonese: bok6; Mandarin: bo2)


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## fdb

Are you sure this is not a loan word from English?
According to my dictionary 薄 means “peppermint”, not “book”.


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## Skatinginbc

Good catch, fdb.  I speak Mandarin and, to the best of my knowledge, 薄 bo2 does not mean "book".  It means "thin" ("Peppermint" is bo4 despite using the same character).  I guess SuperXW probably meant 簿 bù4, which was attested before the time of Christ and by no means a loanword from English.  簿 bu4 is the word used in phrases like "accounting book", "bookkeeping", "notebook", and so forth.  If what SuperXW meant was that 薄 bok6 "thin" in Cantonese is also used as a word for "book", I agree with you, fdb, that it must be a borrowing from English.


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## fdb

Thank you. Very informative.


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## SuperXW

fdb said:


> Are you sure this is not a loan word from English?
> According to my dictionary 薄 means “peppermint”, not “book”.


Sorry I typed the character wrongly, it should be 簿. 
I'm pretty sure it's not a loan word from English. The character 簿 is used in China in ancient times. Only until the modern era, Chinese start to use another character 本 to replace 簿 (because 本 is easier?).
In ancient times, wow, do you think the "great Chinese empire's" character could be a loan from English, or maybe the English word "book" was a loan word from Chinese? 


Skatinginbc said:


> Good catch, fdb.  I speak Mandarin and, to the best of my knowledge, 薄 bo2 does not mean "book".  I guess SuperXW probably meant 簿 bù4, which was attested before the time of Christ and by no means a loanword from English.  簿 bu4 is the word used in phrases like "accounting book", "bookkeeping", "notebook", and so forth.  If what SuperXW meant was that 薄 bok6 in Cantonese is also used as a word for "book", I agree with you, fdb, that it must be a borrowing from English.


Looks like I've messed up 簿 and 薄. My mistake. 簿 should pronounce bu4 in Mandarin as you said. Still sounds very close to "book".
The cantonese 薄bok6 is a borrowing from English? I thought it's just a variant of 簿... 
What should be the Cantonese pronunciation of 簿 then? Why does Cantonese have to borrow that instead of using the traditional character 簿?


----------



## Skatinginbc

SuperXW said:


> What should be the Cantonese pronunciation of 簿 then?


Cantonese *簿* bou6 (< Middle Chinese bó) vs. *薄* bok6 (< Middle Chinese  bâk).  The major difference is the absence/presence of the final consonant /k/.  It's obviously a borrowing to match the English "book", which has a final /k/.  The chance of a semantic shift from "thin" to "book" is extremely slim unless there is an external force (i.e., borrowing).


----------



## SuperXW

I see. Thanks. I think I can reanalyze their relations as following:
簿 (Mandarin: bu4 Cantonese: bou6) accidentally has a similar pronunciation and meaning with English word: book. (Cantonese speakers may not feel them very similar. But Mandarin speakers would feel this way.)
Cantonese speakers (probably Hong Kongese in its colonial era) started using the other character 薄 (Cantonese: bok6, Mandarin: bo4) to mimic the sound of "book", so 薄 became a loan word. This character is accidentally very similar to 簿.


----------



## origumi

Chinese guys (gals?), I admire you for being able to tell the difference between 簿 and 薄. If I was lucky enough to born Chinese, and even if I lived for a 1000 years, I'd most likely still be analphabet.


----------



## Youngfun

There's a theory that book and 簿 both derive from a common PIE source.


----------



## Skatinginbc

簿 (Mandarin bu4, Cantonese bou6 < Old Chinese *bwaɣ), attested in Late Zou, is indeed possibly a loanword related to Old Persian _pavastā_ "covering" (perhaps clay covering used to protect clay tablets) < Proto-Indo-Aryan _*pōstaka_/*_pustaka_ (Sogdian _pwst'k _"book, document, sutra”, Parthian _pwstg _“book, pergament”, Sanskrit _pustaka_ "book, document, booklet", Tocharian _postak_ "book").
The English word _book_, on the other hand, is from Old English _boc_ "book, writing, written document" < Proto-Germanic *_bokiz_ "beech" (Old Norse bok, Dutch beuk, Flemish boek, Old High German buohha, German Buche, Middle Dutch boeke "beech"), from PIE *_bhehaǵos_ "beech".


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## Youngfun

Couldn't Old Chinese 簿 be indeed a PIE loanword from *_bhehaǵos_?


----------



## fdb

Skatinginbc said:


> _..._ Proto-Indo-Aryan _*pōstaka_/*_pustaka_ ....



Skt. _pustaka-_ is a loan word from Old Persian. Although _pawasta-_ occurs only once in the OP corpus, it is confirmed by Middle and New Persian _p__ōst_ “skin, rind, bark”. *_pawastaka­_- is thus primarily “a document make of tree bark or bast”.


----------



## ancalimon

Could there be a relation between Turkic bas (to print, to press) and the word above?

Here is an article about Uyghur printing press sometime before 10th century.
http://the_uighurs.tripod.com/Scrpt.htm

[url]http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=\data\alt\turcet&first=1&off=&text_proto=&method_proto=substring&ic_proto=on&text_meaning=press&method_meaning=substring&ic_meaning=on&text_rusmean=&method_rusmean=substring&ic_rusmean=on&text_atu=&method_atu=substring&ic_atu=on&text_krh=&method_krh=substring&ic_krh=on&text_trk=&method_trk=substring&ic_trk=on&text_tat=&method_tat=substring&ic_tat=on&text_chg=&method_chg=substring&ic_chg=on&text_uzb=&method_uzb=substring&ic_uzb=on&text_uig=&method_uig=substring&ic_uig=on&text_sjg=&method_sjg=substring&ic_sjg=on&text_azb=&method_azb=substring&ic_azb=on&text_trm=&method_trm=substring&ic_trm=on&text_hak=&method_hak=substring&ic_hak=on&text_shr=&method_shr=substring&ic_shr=on&text_alt=&method_alt=substring&ic_alt=on&text_khal=&method_khal=substring&ic_khal=on&text_chv=&method_chv=substring&ic_chv=on&text_jak=&method_jak=substring&ic_jak=on&text_dolg=&method_dolg=substring&ic_dolg=on&text_tuv=&method_tuv=substring&ic_tuv=on&text_tof=&method_tof=substring&ic_tof=on&text_krg=&method_krg=substring&ic_krg=on&text_kaz=&method_kaz=substring&ic_kaz=on&text_nogx=&method_nogx=substring&ic_nogx=on&text_bas=&method_bas=substring&ic_bas=on&text_blkx=&method_blkx=substring&ic_blkx=on&text_gagx=&method_gagx=substring&ic_gagx=on&text_krmx=&method_krmx=substring&ic_krmx=on&text_klpx=&method_klpx=substring&ic_klpx=on&text_sal=&method_sal=substring&ic_sal=on&text_qum=&method_qum=substring&ic_qum=on&text_reference=&method_reference=substring&ic_reference=on&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=proto&ic_any=on

http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/re...ny=&method_any=substring&sort=proto&ic_any=on
[/URL]


----------



## Skatinginbc

Youngfun said:


> Couldn't Old Chinese 簿 be indeed a PIE loanword from *_bhehaǵos_?


簿, a word already attested in the works of 荀子（313BCE－238BCE), is a phono-semantic compound 形聲字.  Its phonetic component 溥 *_pwaɣ_/_phwaɣ_ suggests a voiceless onset in its original source.  Iranian *_pawastaka­_- does not seem to have come from PIE *_bhehaǵos _or *_bhagó-s_ (Pokorny's reconstruction) since PIE *_bh_- is reflected as *_b_- in Iranian (*_bh_- in Indo-Aryan and *_p_- in Tocharian).  Unfortunately, Tocharian _postak_ "book" is likely a loanword from Indo-Iranian (perhpas from Sogdian _pwst'k _or Bactrian _πωσταγο_) according to Douglas Q. Adams.  Even if we believe that _postak_ in Tocharian A and Tocharian B came directly from Proto-Tocharian, we still have trouble tracing it to PIE *_bhagó-s_.  The possibility that Chinese borrowed it from Doric _phagós_ (< PIE *_bhagó-s_) is very slim because _phagós_ doesn't mean "book" or "document" but "oak, acorn" instead.  In addition, Chinese  did not have direct contact with Greeks, so any borrowing had to go through an intermediary.  Alexander the Great did  not conquer Sogdia and Bactria until approximately 327BCE.  It  doesn't seem to have permitted enough time for a second-hand borrowing.


----------



## Gavril

Italian *mancare* "to be insufficient, missing" < Latin _mancus_ "defective" < "mutilated", traced to _manus_ "hand" via the meaning "missing a hand"

Slovenian *manjkati* "to be absent, missing", seemingly related to _manjši_ "smaller", from the same stem seen in Latin _minus_ "less", Icelandic _minni_ "less", etc.

I'm not entirely sure about the etymology of the Slovene word, and it's possible that its semantics have been influenced by the Italian word.


----------



## Walshie79

The Polynesian word for 4 (Maori _​wha_, Tahitian _fa_ etc) sounds virtually identical to English _​four_ said in a non-rhotic accent.


----------



## apmoy70

Serbo-Croatian *"munara/мунaра" *(fem.): _Minaret_
Greek *«μουνάρα»* [mu'nara] (fem.) : _very hot woman_ (vulg.) augment. of *«μουνί»* [mu'ni] (neut.)  --> _pus*y, c*nt_ < either from, i) Venetian *"mona"* (with the same meaning), or, ii) from the Classical masc. noun *«μνόος/μνοῦς» mnóŏs (uncontracted)/ mnoûs (contracted)* --> _soft down (on  young birds)_ (with obscure etymology)


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## ancalimon

The English suffix -ling  =  The Turkish suffix  -li -lı -lu -lü


----------



## arielipi

kaki in french means apricot, while in hebrew it means poop


----------



## Gavril

Slovene _*jedilni list*_ "menu" is composed of _jedilni_ from _jed-_ "eat", plus _list_ "leaf, sheet (of paper), etc.". Without prior knowledge of Slovene, it could seem as though _jedilni list_ meant "eating list", and that _list_ was connected to Eng. _list_, Spanish _lista_ and so on.


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## ancalimon

Turkish "ye : eat"  "yedi : he-she-it ate".

English - Usury : Action of taking exorbitant rate of interest.

Turkish - Aş: To surpass a certain limit. Aşırı : exorbitant.  Aşır : to steal


----------



## momai

Arabic: ast :backside,butt .
English:a$$.


----------



## irinet

The English verb "taste" is an omograph to the Romanian noun in the plural form "taste", meaning the keys on the 'keyboard'.
Also, the French pronoun "qui" is an omophone to the English noun "key".


----------



## Stoggler

Do you mean *homograph* and *homophone*?


----------



## Maroseika

*Brest *- town in France, since 856, probably from Bretonian _bre _- hill plus suffix _-st_.
*Brest *- town in Belorussia, since 1019, from Slavic _beresta _- birch bark or _berest _- elm.


----------



## irinet

Stoggler said:


> Do you mean *homograph* and *homophone*?



Aaah, ok, I skipped the 'h', sorry. We have the same words and I started in Romanian and ended in English. My mistake.

Yes, because, with the first case, we read [teist] in English, but read [taste] in Romanian, a kind of WYSIWYG, so there are homographs ('omografe' in R.).


----------



## stelingo

Modern Greek ναί (ne) = no. Czech ne = no/not


----------



## Gavril

French _clé_ [kle] "key" < Lat. _clauis_ "key"

Eng. _key_ < OE _cæg_, origin unknown

Welsh _cau_ [kaj] "close (a door, etc.)", cognate with Latin _cauea_ "hollow" > French _cave_ "cave"

---------

This isn't really a coincidence (given the divergent semantics), but

Spanish _tejas_ "tiles" < Latin _tegulas_
Sp. _Tejas_ "Texas" < the name of a local Native American tribe


----------



## Rallino

stelingo said:


> Modern Greek ναί (ne) = no. Czech ne = no/not


Except vαı means _yes_ in Greek.


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## ancalimon

Turkish - English

dam  :   dome
tıpa  :  tap
tav (for example, ceiling)  :  top
dam (to be against something to stop it from getting spilled   :    dam (barrage)
bar (wall)  :   bar ( block, prevent)


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## Encolpius

Yes in *Germanic *language is ja. 
Yes in Saigonian *Vietnamese *is dạ pronounced as ja. It is of Old Chinese origin.


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## ancalimon

English - Turkish

These words sound alike.

English = equal

Turkish = eşkol  :  two identical lines  (eş: identical, couple, match, rival) (kol: arm, line)

Even more surprising is that Etymonline have this:



> equal (v.)
> 1580s, "compare, liken," also "match, rival," from equal (adj.). Related: Equaled; equaling.



Another coincidence this time about money between English and Turkic.

shilling (English) ------  sheleg (“non-ambulant”, unconvertible, unexchangeable).  Probably related to the word çelik (steel)

penny (English) ------- peneg (small)  (in Turkish minik : small)

Sterling (English) ------- sytyrlig (twenty sheleg)


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## Encolpius

Italian - ma (Eng.: but) --- Vietnamese mà (the same)


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## ahmedcowon

English: *siege* ("surrounding a town or building")

Arabic: سياج /*siyaj*/ ("a fence surrounding something")


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## Perseas

Encolpius said:


> Italian - ma (Eng.: but) --- Vietnamese mà (the same)


In Greek _ma (μα)_ means the same.


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## ancalimon

And in Turkish "ama"


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## Encolpius

woman -- Hungarian nő -- Vietnamese nữ (of Chinese origin 女 [nǚ]), but since they are very ancient words I can imagine it is not a *coincidence*.


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## ancalimon

I guess if there is not enough evidence, we have to call it a coincidence until someone proves otherwise and most of the Europeans accept it.  From what I have learned about the art of etymology, that's the accepted standard.


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## Escorpí Reial

This is very known:

- habeo (Latin) and: haver (ca), avoir (fr), avere (it), haver (pt), avere (ro) and haber (es)
         - From PIE *cabh- ("to grab, to take")

- habjana (Proto-Germanic) and have (en), hebben (nl), haben (de), hava (sv) and have (da)
- From PIE *kehp- ("to seize")


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## ancalimon

Between English and Turkish:

let (to allow, to enable, to give permission ) : It appears in suffix form in Turkish: -let , -lat

English: to let someone touch
Turkish: el*let*


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## Gavril

Swedish *slag* "sort, kind" < Germanic **slah*- "strike"
Slovene *slog *"style" < the prefix *s*- "with" + **log *from the same root seen in _po*log* _"deposit"_, po*lag*ati_ "to lay"


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## francisgranada

*a* - indefinite article (English < an "one")
*a* - definite article  (Hungarian < az "that")

*i* - and (many Slavic languages)
*y* - and (Spanish)


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## franknagy

HU eleven = EN brisk
EN eleven  = HU tizenegy

HU tar = EN bald
EN tar = HU kátrány

HU sugár is pronounced in almast same like the EN sugar.
HU sugár = EN radius
EN sugar  = HU cukor

HU alma = ES manzana
ES alma = HU lélek

HU kasza = ES guadaña
ES casa   = HU ház

HU aréna = ES palestra (lugar)
HU homok = ES arena (materia)

RU воспаление = HU lob
RU лоб = HU homlok


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## fdb

franknagy said:


> HU aréna = ES palestra (lugar)
> HU homok = ES arena (materia)



This one is not a coincidence. The Spanish word is derived, the Hungarian borrowed, from Latin arena “sand, sandy place for athletic contests, arena”.


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## Gavril

Modern Greek *o* "the" (masculine sg. definite article) < earlier _ho_ < *_so_
Portuguese *o *"the" (masc. sg.) < *_illo_

But I don't know if this is a pure coincidence, since the thematic vowel -_o_- in masculine stems like *_illo_ may be based on the vowel of IE *_so_ "that".


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## franknagy

HU part = EN shore
EN part of sg  = HU vminek a része

RU семь = HU hét 
HU szem = RU глаз

GE Harz  = HU gyanta
HU harc  = GE Kampf

GE süß   = HU édes
HU szűz  = GE Jungfrau


Gavril said:


> Swedish *slag* "sort, kind" < Germanic **slah*- "strike"
> Slovene *slog *"style" < the prefix *s*- "with" + **log *from the same root seen in _po*log* _"deposit"_, po*lag*ati_ "to lay"


Hungarian *slag* = watering rubber tube in the garden.


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## Gavril

Swedish *ombud* "agent, attorney" (< _om_ "about" + -_bud_ "command"), the source of English *ombudsman*

Old English *ombiht* "servant, officer", possibly < Celtic _ambactos_ "messenger, servant" < *_amb_- "around" + *_ag_- "drive" + *-_tos_

Celt. _ambactos_ is also the origin (via Latin and Romance) of Eng. *ambassador*, etc.

So the _om_-/_am_- in these words has a common origin (IE *_ambhi_ "around"), but the rest is a coincidence.


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## franknagy

Greek: hülasz
Hungarian: hülye
stupid
See ancient Greek philosophers' teaching dialogs between Hülasz and Philonousz.
......

HU tűr = DE er/sie duldet
DE Tür = HU ajtó

HU báj = EN charm
EN bye = HU viszlát

HU máj = EN liver
EN my = HU -m, enyém

HU mély = EN deep
EN may? = HU szabad?

HU kéj = EN sexual pleasure
EN key = HU kulcs

HU háj = EN fat
EN hi = HU szia

HU héj = EN peel, skin
EN hay = HU széna

HU táj = EN landscape
EN tie = HU nyakkendő

The Greek Island *Κος *
I see the name of this island in two forms in the shop windows of travel agencies:
1. *Kos* which means *ram*,
2. *Kosz* which means *dirt* in English.


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## Kaxgufen

mataripis said:


> The Bisaya Language has word "Yabe" for key.



Viene del español* llave* seguramente.


osemnais said:


> cherry/Kirsche on one hand and череша(cheresha) on another
> all meaning cherry



*Cereza* en castellano.


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## Gavril

I don't think any of these is a coincidence: _cherry, Kirsche, cereza_ etc. all come from Greek _kerasion _"cherry", and I suspect the Bulgarian word does too.

On the other hand, the similarity of Spanish *ciruela* "plum" and *cereza* "cherry" is a genuine coincidence, as the first comes from Latin _prunus cereola_ "wax plum" < _cera_ "wax".


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## franknagy

The Bulgarian word *фас* means in Hungarian *csikk*, in English *stub*.
Its pronunciation is almost the same as that of the most coarse synonym of the male sexual organ in Hungarian.
...
череша = *cseresznye *in Hungarian = Kirsche = *Cereza* en castellano.
but
*ceruza *= lápiz en castellano.
...
Is there any link between Greek _kerasion and Kyrie Eleison?
...
In Hungarian *paradicsom* = tomato and *Paradicsom* = Paradise._


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## DreamerX

Here are some pairings for English and French.

EN court – FR cour
FR court – EN short

EN son – FR fils
FR son – EN sound

EN pain – FR douleur, peine, souffrance
FR pain – EN bread

EN bribe – FR pot de vin
FR bribe – EN scrap, snippet, crumbs

EN ride – FR _v_. aller (à cheval, à bicyclette, en moto); _n_. tour, trajet, chemin, promenade, balade
FR ride – EN wrinkle, line, furrow

EN empire – FR empire
FR empire – EN empire, but also, “He/She/It makes/is making things worse.” (3rd person singular conjugation of “empirer” – to make things worse, from “pire” – worse)

As far as I’m concerned, the roots of the respective words in each pair do not coincide. There is literally an overabundance of pairs with words that have common roots but different meanings, although that is not what this thread is about.


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## Perseas

franknagy said:


> ...
> Is there any link between Greek _kerasion and Kyrie Eleison?
> ...
> _


  No, of course not. 
_κεράσι(ον)_ means _cherry_
_κύριε ελέησον_ means _lord have mercy_ (religious context)


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## DreamerX

Here are some more for English and French:

EN chair – FR chaise
FR chair – EN flesh

EN lie – FR _v_. mentir; _n_. mensonge
FR lie – EN “He/She/It connects/is connecting (something to something).”

EN lit – FR Je/Tu/Il/Elle/On/Nous/Vous/Ils/Elles ai/as/a/avons/avez/ont allumé/illuminé (quelque chose)
FR lit – EN bed

EN plait – FR _v_. tresser/natter; _n_. tresse/natte
FR plait – EN lit., “He/She/It is pleasing to me.” Semantic function same as that of the English “I like him/her/it.”

EN pair – FR paire
FR pair – EN peer

EN laid – FR vergé, posé
FR laid – EN ugly


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## fdb

DreamerX said:


> EN pair – FR paire
> FR pair – EN peer



Not coincidences. They are (etymologically) all the same word.


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## DreamerX

Yes, you're right, my bad.  All four words derive from the Latin _par-_, which means "equal."


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## ancalimon

English: "Precious" if divided as pr and ecious

Turkish:
pr ~ Bir : one
ecious ~ eşsiz : unique, irreplaceable, peerless, precious


When writing a letter, the English write "dear" in front of names.  In Turkish we write "değerli" in front of names.

değer means "value of an object or a person"
değerli means "valuable, exalted, venerable, esteemed, precious"


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## franknagy

The Hungarian women wear CSAT in their hair. It is at list silent unlike
the English CHAT.

English RACE sounds like Hungarian RÉSZ which means part.
The Hungarian word TOLL means feather.


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## ancalimon

http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/41TurkicInEnglish/EnglishTurkicLexiconEn.htm

This article shows many Turkic-English parallels which should be considered coincidences ranging from words related with body, religion, life, social life, etc...

Some examples:

acı: *ache*, pain, sour, *acid*
bod: *body*
rop: *robe*
kyr: *girl*
kun, hun: *kin*

Some of the words listed as Turkic in that page have more probable origins inside other languages.

The author bases these similarities on the movement of Kurgan people during prehistoric times.

My theory is that the first Proto-Indo-European speakers were polyglot.


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## franknagy

Do you permit declinated matches?

RU *моём* (my) - HU *majom* (ape)


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## Gavril

I don't see a problem with using declined forms per se, but I think the original point of the thread was to find words that coincide both semantically and phonetically --  pairs like Russ. _mojom_ / Hung. _majom_ only coincide phonetically, not in meaning.

That said, even many professional linguists routinely attempt to connect words that don't match semantically, despite being unable (as far as I can currently tell) to provide any consistent justification for why some meanings are similar enough to be seen as related, but others aren't.

With this in mind, I don't see a problem with posting semantically dissimilar pairs like Russ. _mojom_/ Hung. _majom_, as there's no clear reason (that I can see) why they wouldn't be admissible for serious comparison, while other pairs (such as Swedish _slag_ / Slovene _slog_, and many others I've posted) supposedly would be.


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## learnerr

Gavril said:


> That said, even many professional linguists routinely attempt to connect words that don't match semantically, despite being unable (as far as I can currently tell) to provide any consistent justification for why some meanings are similar enough to be seen as related, but others aren't.


I think the only useful criterion is the aha-one (similar to that cited by Moro for checking the degree of phonetic resemblence, see the opening post for the detail): if hearing word M may induce a specific person to think that it either a) was, or b) could be N, then they are similar enough. After all, this is the criterion that is important for our treatment of such pairs, be it simply amusing, or arguing a theory that languages A and B have a common bag of items.

The problem, of course, is "who is the specific person"? I think it is up to a poster to decide; it may be a person himself, or someone s|he imagines. What we know (provided the poster took the criterion into consideration) is that the poster had indeed a picture of such person… In other words, I think the only possible criteria are subjective, i.e. dependent on ideas had by people. But since we know that people are constrained in the choice of ideas they may have, subjective does not mean meaningless.


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## Gavril

learnerr said:


> I think the only useful criterion is the aha-one (similar to that cited by Moro for checking the degree of phonetic resemblence, see the opening post for details): if hearing word M may induce a specific person to think that it either a) was, or b) could be N, then they are similar enough.



Just to be clear, are you proposing this as a criterion for whether to investigate a potential semantic similarity, or are you saying that this counts as evidence for such similarity?

I honestly don't think I could reliably identify a "hunch" that word X could be related to word Y, even within myself. I would know if I had momentarily mistaken X for Y, but I wouldn't necessarily trust this evidence. If, for example, I was a historical linguist with a vested interest in discovering (and publishing) solutions to etymological questions, how would I know that my (apparent) conviction of similarity wasn't an artifact of this bias, unless I had a systematic way of evaluating it?

(E.g., perhaps I could compare my reaction with the reactions of many other people to the same data -- which raises the question of how these reactions should be elicited, etc.)


----------



## learnerr

Gavril said:


> Just to be clear, are you proposing this as a criterion for whether to investigate a potential semantic similarity, or are you saying that this counts as evidence for such similarity?


I am proposing a criterion only for the purposes of this thread, i.e. what is the similarity of meaning that is enough for considering that the words conform to the third criterion listed by Moro. Perhaps I have misquoted you. Of course, we cannot look into the minds of others, but still this criterion makes it possible to decide for ourselves about what is a pair and what is not. For example, franknagy's pair fails this test in my eyes, because I cannot imagine a person, whom the mere hearing of the word "an ape" could outside of any context induce to think it is, well, "my", or the other way around. Thinking further, a person would certainly feel a link, but this link would be neither of "this-is-that" nature, nor involuntary and "natural" (even if vague). The same with Maroseika's Spanish temprano against Russian temp (there he was meaning two coincidences at once, I take one of them that I don't like).

As for etymology, I know practically nothing about it, but I think that the linguists simply have to rely mostly on sound for providing any strict criteria. As for meanings, they may consider them in the following way: as I suggested, but the "specific persons" must be those people who were supposed to talk a language in question. Since almost nothing is known of them how they thought, and nothing at the moment is known about people in general with certainty, such arguments have to be only somewhat convincing, but not strict and formal.


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## Gavril

learnerr said:


> I am proposing a criterion only for the purposes of this thread, i.e. what is the similarity of meaning that is enough for considering that the words conform to the third criterion listed by Moro. Perhaps I have misquoted you.



OK, I see. The part of my post that you quoted (in #226) had to do with the methodology of (some) comparative linguists, so I wasn't sure if you were talking about this thread or about etymological proposals in general.



> Of course, we cannot look into the minds of others, but still this criterion makes it possible to decide for ourselves about what is a pair and what is not. For example, franknagy's pair fails this test in my eyes, because I cannot imagine a person, whom the mere hearing of the word "an ape" could outside of any context induce to think it is, well, "my", or the other way around. Thinking further, a person would certainly feel a link, but this link would be neither of "this-is-that" nature, nor involuntary and "natural" (even if vague).



The etymology _majom -> mojom_ (Hungarian -> Russian) does seem a little dubious to me, but not because a semantic link is inherently implausible. I find _majom -> mojom_ doubtful because 1) pronoun borrowing is a rare phenomenon, 2) the 1sg. _m-_ pronoun stem is very widespread if not universal in IE languages, and 3) as far as I know (I could be mistaken), Slavic languages rarely adopt foreign words as oblique case forms -- if _mojom_ were loaned from _majom_, I think we would expect to see the _-m_ treated as part of the stem of the word.

As far as loaning in the other direction, from Russian to Hungarian, I don't know how likely Hungarian would be to adopt the oblique case of a noun (my understanding is that this is a rare phenomenon worldwide).



> As for etymology, I know practically nothing about it, but I think that the linguists simply have to rely mostly on sound for providing any strict criteria. As for meanings, they may consider them in the following way: as I suggested, but the "specific persons" must be those people who were supposed to talk a language in question. Since almost nothing is known of them how they thought, and nothing at the moment is known about people in general with certainty, such arguments have to be only somewhat convincing, but not strict and formal.



If we need to know about the thought processes of a language's speakers in order to evaluate a claim of semantic change, but we don't currently have the needed information, then I don't think there is any basis (within semantics) to determine whether a semantic-change claim is convincing in the first place. "Maybe" is the extent of what we can say about a proposal like _mojom <-> majom_, until some type of systematic methodology is introduced (which is what I tried to do above).


----------



## learnerr

As I see, this thread had two purposes: amusement and telling a nice fable about how appearances may be deceptive. From Moro's part, it was very likely only the first (judging by his comment that such coincidences must happen very seldom).


Gavril said:


> If we need to know about the thought processes of a language's speakers in order to evaluate a claim of semantic change, but we don't currently have the needed information, then I don't think there is any basis (within semantics) to determine whether a semantic-change claim is convincing in the first place. "Maybe" is the extent of what we can say about a proposal like _mojom <-> majom_, until some type of systematic methodology is introduced (which is what I tried to do above).


I do not see how evaluating such claim can be done _without_ knowledge of the mechanics of thought processes. First of all, people do think differently and deal with words and their sequences differently, so if we develop an abstract model for semantic changes that ignores these mechanics (which we do not know and, as far as I know, we as humanity are not currently making any progress towards it), then this model, based of course on abstract properties of words and texts (what else it may possibly be based on?), may even serve to thinking of some, but will fail to serve to thinking of others; moreover, even the same person may not respond to a word in the same way (so I don't understand what Moro meant by "identical" meanings).

That is not to say that whatever we may know about thinking of people in general or about thinking of certain groups of people available for study, that would not help to get anything beyond a guess for semantic changes that occurred driven by people who lived years ago. I guess that as far as meanings are concerned, etymology will always have the same degree of rigour as it has today. I.e. they eventually will have to believe to intuition, leaving the burden of rigour only to phonetists, and students of archaic writing, and so on.


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## Gavril

learnerr said:


> As I see, this thread had two purposes: amusement and telling a nice fable about how appearances may be deceptive. From Moro's part, it was very likely only the first (judging by his comment that such coincidences must happen very seldom).



I think this thread can also serve as a collection of evidence for the cross-linguistic frequency (or infrequency) of sound-meaning coincidences. (Some linguists claim that these coincidences are negligibly rare, and that therefore, a surface resemblance between words, such as Eng. _name_ / Jpn. _namae_, really does point (in most cases) to an etymological connection between these words.)

Threads on All Languages tend to be "list"-oriented rather than discussion-oriented -- maybe this is what you mean by "amusement"? -- but that doesn't mean that the lists can't collect useful data.


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## learnerr

By "amusement" I mean that the idea of such pairs is funny, interesting by itself. Unusual facts are often funny and amusing to hear of.


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## franknagy

The following match is not random:
Slovenian: *muka* = (in English _torment_) -> Hungarian *munka* = (in English _work_)
but this one is random:
Slovenian: *moka* = (in English lour) sounds like the Hungarian *móka* = (in English _jest_).


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## ancalimon

English  -  Turkish

heal -   iyi ol  (heal)
hail -   iyi ol  (be good)

court -  korut (to (make) protect), kur (to assemble)


Old English   -   Turkish

segl (sail, veil, curtain) -  sakla (hide) , sığ (shallow water), su (water), sal (raft), salın (to start a journey)



Nordic  -   Turkish

troll   -   dumrul  (Dumrul was a person who guarded a bridge and asked for money from anyone who wanted top pass it. He asked for even more money from people that choose not to pass it)

Some God names:

Odin : Descended Fire
Thor : Töre (law), Tur (Türk, human)
Jord : earth, ground, country, ~the mother of human beings)



Persian - Turkish

ateş  (fire) -  od  (od is a core word in Turkic from which many words that are related with living by the hearth ~ fire cult are derived. Ultimately it's related with hole, home, refuge, dwell.

Here are some words related with od:
otur: to dwell, to sit, >meeting, >court, >a session, >a hearing
ota: to get warm, to light a fire
otacı: healer
odun: wood
ot: hay, weed, dry grass
otçak: the place where fire burns, hearth
otağ: the great tent with fire burning in the middle
oda: room


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## franknagy

The German word _"der Gang"_ is used in Hungarian as _"gang"_ but it means only hanging balcony "der Laubengang".


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## ancalimon

English-Turkic

tax -  takas  (exchange of goods, sevices)

English - Turkish

More *than* him : on*dan* çok
More *than* you : sen*den* çok

I came *then* I saw : geldim *de* gördüm:


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## Gavril

*Gaul *(ancient region of Europe): from French _Gaule, _which is thought to come from *_Wal_- < Germanic *_walh_-, a noun used to refer to various neighboring non-Germanic tribes (Wales, Wallachia, Walloon, etc.)

*Gallia*, the ancient name (from Roman times) of Gaul: from an unknown root, possibly connected to Welsh _gallu_ "ability"

(Not necessarily a full coincidence, since the use of the term _Gaul_ might have been partly motivated by knowledge of the earlier term.)


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## Awwal12

It's strange that some of the best examples apparently weren't mentioned yet. 
Russian странно "stránno" (strange, adv.) vs. Italian "strano" (strange).
Russian надзор "nadzór" (supervision, surveillance) vs. Persian نظارت "næzo )rǽt" (supervision, surveillance), and, even closer, Tajik назорат "nаzorát" with the same meaning.
English "bad" and Persian بد "bæd" (bad), etymologically unrelated as well.


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## Barboso

I like one very special: "Turkey" in English means both a country and an animal. In Brazilian Portuguese "Perú" is obviously also the name of a country and an animal. Definitely not the same country (Turkey = Turquia), but curiously the same animal (turkey = perú)!


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## Gavril

English *cause *[kɔz] < Latin _causa_
Welsh *achos *['axos] "affair", "cause" < Latin _occasio

_Finnish *pariton *"odd" (as in _odd number_), from _pari _"pair" (< Latin _pār_) + the suffix -_ton_ ("without")
Greek *perittón *(neuter nom./acc. sg.) "odd", possibly from _peri_- "around" + the suffix -_tto-_


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## ger4

patriota said:


> The Japanese often end their sentences with "ne." We also do that in Brazil in some sentences (not as often though) with "né?" from "não é?" = "isn't it?", "right?".


In colloquial (north) German we add "... 'ne?" as well, meaning something like "...isn't it?"


Konanen said:


> Well, that is interesting.
> What do you propose for Kurmancî "ez", then? PIE: *ég´h2- ? (I don't have the characters right now. You will know what I mean, check my previous post.)


Does "ez" mean "I" (1st person singular)? If so, it is similar to Latvian: "es" and Bulgarian: "az".


momai said:


> Arabic: ast :backside,butt .
> English:a$$.


Latvian "aste" = "tail"

Chinese: "de" corresponds to French "de" ("belonging to") in some contexts, except that it follows the word it refers to: 
Zhongguo de = from China, belonging to China

Japanese: "no" corresponds to Latvian "no" ("from") in some contexts; again, it is added to the word it refers to, whereas in Latvian it precedes it:
Nihon no = from Japan / no Rîgas = from Riga


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## ancalimon

"Cannibal" if it was a Turkish word would have meant "his/her blood is honey" or "his/her blood is delicious".  "Kanı bal".


----------



## Gavril

- Slovene _razum_ "reason" (= "reasoning capacity", "sense") < the prefix _raz-_ ("out", etc.) + _um_ ("mind")
- English _reason_ < Latin _ratio_ < _reri_ "to reckon"

- Slovene _in_ "and", possibly < common Slavic _i_ "and" (< *ei) + the suffix *-no (still need to confirm this)
- English _and_ (pronounced similarly to "in" by many speakers) < Germanic *_andi_ < IE *_anti_


- Swedish _hon_ "she" < *_kona_ (not sure if this reconstruction is 100% correct, but at least the initial consonant was *k)
- Welsh _hon_ "this (feminine)" < *_sona_ (same caveat as above)


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## Kaxgufen

Basque (euskera) hau,honi, hori are determinants (this, that) and also used as pronouns (he, she, it)


----------



## animelover

Holger2014 said:


> In colloquial (north) German we add "... 'ne?" as well, meaning something like "...isn't it?"


And my grandma (Saxony), for example, likes to end sentences with "wa", presumably an abbreviation of "was". わ 'wa' is a Japanese sentence final particle as well.

まあ、きれいだわ。 (Japanese)
'maa, kiree da wa' (Romanized)
"Das ist aber schön, wa?" (German)
"Well this is nice, huh?"

Finding examples between Japanese-English/German seems to be pretty hard as their phonologies are quite different. Japanese is basucally 50% vowels, so most word longer than 2 syllables don't sound like any German/English word (to me.)

One more example I came up with:

斬る (Japanese)
'kiru' (Romanized, remember 'r' sounds like 'l', and the final 'u' gets devoiced and is [almost] inaudible)
"kill" (English)

罪人を斬る (Japanese)
'zainin o kiru' (Romanized)
"kill a criminal" (English)


----------



## ger4

Genitive/possessive endings:
-n: Finnish (genitive)
-(n)in: Turkish (vowel changing according to vowel harmony)
-in: Slavic (possessive, no longer productive in Russian [I think] but apparently in some other Slavic languages)
-n: derivational suffix (there might be a better term) in many IE languages (as in Europe > European)
-no: Japanese postposition (in some contexts expressing possession)
-n/-iin/-giin: Mongolian http://sprachen.sprachsignale.de/mongolisch/khkgramm3.html

"one":
ichi: (Sino-) Japanese
egy: Hungarian (-gy seems to have a pronunciation similar to -dj; I don't know how to put IPA symbols in here)
ek: Hindi
yksi: Finnish (-s derived from -t)

3rd person singular pronoun:
ta: Mandarin Chinese (he = she)
ta: Estonian (short form of tema; he = she)


----------



## apmoy70

Eng. adv. *after* < Proto-Germanic *after (further behind) - Homeric Gr. adv. *«αὐτάρ» autár* (in MoGr we pronounce it [afˈtar]) --> _later, nevertheless, but_ (with obscure etymology).
Lat. *amen* < Hebr.  אָמָּן (truly) - Classical Greek *«ἤ μήν» ḗ mḗn* (interj.) --> _truly, certainly_.
Eng. *boss* < Proto-Germanic *bautaną (cognate of _beat_) - Homeric Gr. *«πόσις» pósīs* --> _lord of the house_ (PIE *poti-, _husband, lord of the house_).
Eng. *mock* < Proto-Germanic *mukkijaną (to shout) - Classical Gr. *«μωκάομαι/μωκῶμαι» mōkáŏmai* (uncontracted)/*mōkõmai* (uncontracted) --> _to mock, ridicule_ (with obscure etymology); mockery = «μῶκος» mõkŏs (masc.). 
Eng. *space* < Anglo-Norman space < Lat. spatium (room, quantity of length) - Classical Gr. adj. *«σπίδιος» spídīŏs* --> _extensive, wide_ (with obscure etymology).


----------



## ger4

fdb said:


> In most languages the pronouns are very short words. But this means that from a purely mathematical point of view the probability of random coincidence between two unrelated languages is fairly high.


Despite that logical explanation I find these similarities with (Baltic-) Finnic, Kazakh and even Manchu quite surprising: 

1st person singular possessive:

min/mijn/my/mein/mon/mi/... - Indo-European
minun/minu/... - Finnish/ Estonian
mening* - Kazakh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_language 
mini - Manchu http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Manchu/Lesson_11_-_Grammar_Summary

---
* *менің*


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## Gavril

Holger2014 said:


> Despite that logical explanation I find these similarities with (Baltic-) Finnic and even Manchu quite surprising:
> 
> 1st person singular possessive:
> min/ mijn/ my/ mon etc - Indo-European
> minun/ minu - Finnish/ Estonian



In Finnish, the -_n_- is part of the stem of the singular pronouns: _mi*n*ä_ "I" (nominative), accusative _mi*n*ut_, partitive _mi*n*ua_, etc.; _si*n*ä_ "you" (nom.), acc. _si*n*ut_, prt. _si*n*ua_ etc.; _hä*n*_ "he", acc. _hä*n*et_, prt. _hä*n*tä_, etc. 

By contrast, the -_n_- in IE words like _mine_, _thine_, etc. is an adjectival suffix.

Continuing the list of coincidences:

Spanish *ser* "to be" (infinitive) and *soy* "I am" appear to come from the same root, just like _dar_ "to give" and _doy_ "I give". But, in fact, _ser _comes from earlier _seer_, which comes from Latin _sedere_ "to sit", whereas _soy_ comes from Latin _sum_, whose infinitive was _esse_.


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## Gavril

Italian *apre *"opens" (3sg. present) < Latin _aperire_ "to open"< *ap- "away" + *wer- "close"
Slovene *odpre *"opens" < _odpreti _"to open" < _od_- "from, off" + *_preti _< cognate with Russian _peret_' "to press, push", and further possibly with Latin _spernere_, English _spurn_, etc.


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## Radioh

'Mate' in English as a friendly way of addressing somebody is similar to Vietnamese 'mày'(pronounce /mei/). Mày is used to address (close) friends; it sounds friendly and very informal. However, it might sound rude if used for somebody you have just got acquainted.
R.
Edit: Ah, 'mày' does not always sound friendly. Depending on the context, it can have a negative or a positive connotation.


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## franknagy

tFighterPilot said:


> I always assumed it's not a coincidence, that it's related to the Arab occupation of Spain.


In Hungarian _el _means away.
In Hungarian _al _means sub- mainly in military ranks: _al_hadnagy, _al_ezredes_ = sub-_lieutenant, sub-lieutenant.

 Q: _How do you say "fing"="farth" with only "a" sounds? A: Al_-far-hang. Sub-bum-sound.

English-Hungarian pairs: 
Eleven in Hungarian means vivid.
Tar means in H. bald.
Case -> kéz [hand].
Why -> váj [scoop]
Hold means Moon.
Nap means Sun.


----------



## er targyn

mening* - Kazakh 
mini - Manchu 

They are related languages.


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## Gavril

Latin *pati *"suffer, undergo", possibly from the same root as _paene_ "almost", Greek _pêma_ "misery, calamity", etc.
Finnish *potea* "to suffer (from a disease or condition)", verb stem _pot_e-
Greek *patheîn* "to suffer" (aorist), from earlier *_kwn.th_-, cognate with Old Irish _cessad_ "suffering", Lithuanian _kę̃sti_ "endure" etc.

I cannot remember the etymology proposed for Finnish _potea_, so I'm not absolutely sure it is unrelated to Latin _pati_.


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## franknagy

Short Hungarian coinciding words with a few other Languages:
*ez* = this, *az *= that.
"-*on*" suffix of nouns  = "on" preposition in English.
"*De*" means in HU "but".
"*Min*i" = miniskirt.
"*Kosz*" 1. Greek island 2. Dirt.

Bulgarian *фас *= Hun. cigarettacsikk = En. cigarette stub.
Hungarian *fasz* = coarsest synonym of penis in Hun.
German *Faß* =  Hun. hordó = En. barrel.


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## Gavril

Not an exact semantic match, but:

Armenian *տուփ* (Western pronunciation: *dup*) "small box, case"
Low German *duppe, doppe* "beaker, jar" (seemingly related to German _Topf_ "pot")


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## luitzen

Bulgarian *стоплихте* (warmed) sounds exactly the same as Dutch *stoplichten* (traffic lights). Though their meaning is quite different, the pronounciation matches quite closely for such long words.


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## Encolpius

franknagy said:


> Bulgarian *фас *= Hun. cigarettacsikk = En. cigarette stub.
> Hungarian *fasz* = coarsest synonym of penis in Hun.
> German *Faß* =  Hun. hordó = En. barrel.



Most of your previous examples are false, they are no coincidences at all. 
I am posting the thread-openers text here again: 

_What I am specifically looking for is a situation when:

*3. The words M and N have identical or close meanings.*

And I agree with the thread-opener again, it is a rare phenomenon and hard to find. 
Here is a real example of mine: 

Hungarian: neeeeeee [English: nooooooooo - you shout when you see your house explode, etc.] [Uralic origin]
Czech: neeeeeeee [Slavic origin]



_


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## Gavril

Welsh _nawr_ "now" < _yn awr_ "in (this) hour"
English _now_

(Welsh has historically had other words for "now", and the modern-day preference for _nawr _could well be influenced by English.)


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## Stoggler

Do you know the origin of the northern Welsh word for "now", rŵan, Gavril?  It's "nawr" backwards (ignoring the circumflex), but I assumed that was coincidence.


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## Gavril

According to the folks at GPC (I don't know how to link to the entry itself),_ rŵan_ is from _yr awr hon_ "this hour". Apparently another variant of this word is _yrŵan_.


----------



## ancalimon

Babylonian goddess "Ishtar" means "light bringer"

In Turkish
"ışıtır" means "(it) illuminates" ... or "ışıdır" means "it is *the* thing that is illumination".

"ısıtır" means "(it) heats you" ... or "ısıdır" means "it is *the* thing that is heat"


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## franknagy

LilianaB said:


> Pojke is also a boy in Swedish. Would it be of Finno-Ugric origin?


Why not?
In Hungarian "fia" means "his/her son", "fiú" means "boy"; "lánya" means "his/her daughter", "lány" means "girl".
*The language needed words with meaning restricted  to *"boy" and "daughter", respectively.
They were borrowed from Gypsy: "csávó" and "csaj", respectively.
The word "klapec" for "boy" came from Slovakian to Hungarian.


----------



## Hntranslation

Hi. 
Ciao (in English!?) and Chào (in Vietnamese) are pronounced a bit likely. The meaning is quite the same except for the fact that Ciao is used  for farewell only while Chào is for both greeting and farewell.

Cheers,


----------



## Encolpius

Has anybody mentioned the Japanese *so *and Germanic (English, German..) *so*?


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## Gavril

Not directly, but the stem *so*- from which it derives (also seen in _sono_, _sore _"that") was mentioned in an earlier post.

By the way, just for accuracy's sake: the adverb *sō* ("so") has a long vowel. *so* (short vowel) has other meanings in Japanese ("ancestor", etc.).


----------



## Dymn

Hntranslation said:


> Ciao (in English!?) and Chào (in Vietnamese) are pronounced a bit likely. The meaning is quite the same except for the fact that Ciao is used  for farewell only while Chào is for both greeting and farewell.


Curious. At first sight I thought that they wouldn't be two unrelated words since _ciao_ has expanded from all over the world, but they are. _Ciao_ comes from Italian, and was initially _s-ciao_ / _s-ciavo_ in Venetian language, meaning '(I am) your slave'.


----------



## ancalimon

Some religious coincidences.

bible: Read as "baybıl" in Turkish. Similar to Bay Bil.   Bay: God, deity   Bil : to know

torah: Similar to Turkish "doğru" meaning "the truth".

injeel: (I think bible in Arabic): similar to "incele" in Turkish which means "to evaluate, to study, to verify, to correct, to attest, ..."

Kur*an*: It means "*the* constitution", "*the* establishment.  It can mean "the thing which covers every other thing" (exactly like how Kuran explains itself).  or "the final law setter"  (kural : law, rule)


----------



## apmoy70

ancalimon said:


> ...*injeel*: (I think bible in Arabic): similar to "incele" in Turkish which means "to evaluate, to study, to verify, to correct, to attest, ..."
> ...


That's from the Greek *«εὐαγγέλιον»* [evaɲɟeli.on] (mediaeval Byzantine pronunciation) --> lit. _good-news_, the _gospel_


----------



## rhitagawr

LilianaB said:


> Pojke is also a boy in Swedish. Would it be of Finno-Ugric origin?


It would be. Finnish pojka = boy. There's also _pian_ (=soon) in Finnish and _yn fuan_ in Welsh. _U_ and _i_ in Welsh represent the same sound.
There’s also _iâ_ (ice, pronounced like the German _Ja_) in Welsh and _jää_ in Finnish.
_Hufen iâ_ in Welsh = ice cream.


----------



## franknagy

> This essay might be of interest to you (it also contains a lot of examples):
> How likely are chance resemblances between languages?


Have you read the science fiction story: "The 9*10^9 names of God"?
Its essence is that a the Tibet Church pays a programmer for program that generates God's all possible names obeying the laws of he Tibet language. The employees believe that if all possible names are generated then the word comes to its end. The programmer starts to run the program and leaves the monastery in the dark night. He is laughing at the belief of the Lama's belief. But... *He is looking up the sky and sees the stars one by one to disappear*.  
My question to Tibet experts: What are the rules given to the programmer?


----------



## francisgranada

franknagy said:


> ...  *The language needed words with meaning restricted  to *"boy" and "daughter", respectively. They were borrowed from Gypsy: "csávó" and "csaj", respectively.
> The word "klapec" for "boy" came from Slovakian to Hungarian.


This is not the reason. _Csaj_, _csávó _and _klapec _  do not belong to the standard register (_klapec _is almost not used, as far as I notice). 

For curiosity, _chavo _(also from Romani/Gypsy) exists in Spanish as well, neverthless the Spanish words for _boy _and _son _are etymologically different.


----------



## franknagy

Gavril said:


> Finnish _alku _"beginning"


Hungarian a_lku_ means in English _bargain_.


----------



## rhitagawr

Talking of Welsh, which I was a few postings ago, the Welsh for _rape_ in the sense of sexual violence is _trais_ (noun) and _treisio_ (verb). That's two words. (_Trais_ also has a more general meaning of violence.) The Finnish words are _raiskau_s and _raiskata_. I suspect the Welsh and Finnish words are related in some way, although it's difficult to see how a Welsh word could have found its way to Finland and _vice versa_. Perhaps someone knows. I can't find anything online.


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## Gavril

According to my (print) etymological dictionary, Finnish _raiskata_ comes from the noun _raiska_, which refers to various negative things: "wretched creature, worn-out object, rubbish". The origin of _raiska_ is unknown according to this source.

I'm not sure if there is a widely-accepted etymology for Welsh _trais_, but I have seen it connected to _trîn_ "battle", Irish _trén_ "strong", etc.


----------



## rhitagawr

Thanks, Gavril. My dictionary gives _tafodi_ (abuse, scold) as one meaning of the verb _trin_. So there's at least an idea of treating someone unfairly even though _tafod_ (tongue) suggests it's only verbal abuse. _Trin_ also has a more neutral meaning of _treat_, e.g. _dyn trin gwallt_ (barber, the man who treats your hair) which I did see once, and _llawdriniaeth_ (surgery, treatment by hand).


----------



## lettore

A funny one.
Italian: poltróna (an armchair).
Russian: пол-трóна (half a throne).
Even the stress is the same. But the sound [l] is different: in Italian it must be soft (I think), in Russian it is hard.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to explain the difference between _soft_ and _hard_ consonants.
When I imagine a throne (трон), I always imagine an _armchair_ that has a _king_ in it. So, you have…

Good night!


----------



## franknagy

> A funny one.
> Italian: poltróna (an armchair).
> Russian: пол-трóна (half a throne).



Hungarian *poltúra*= an old money, coin of very small value. 
*Politúr* = a shiny thin sensitive layer of shellac on the surface of a wooden table.

Used often with old  and hard kohlrabi, comparing it to wood:
_"Ez a karalábé olyan fás, hogy *politúrozni* lehetne."  _
Other usage with stupid and stubborn people:
_"Fafej, politúr"_ = wooden head, shellac!


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## Encolpius

Czech -- kutat (prospect for something) [origin? not Hungarian]
Hungarian -- kutat (might have similar meaning) [origin? not Czech ]
That's a quiz for Francis..


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## Dymn

Hungarian - _kér_ 'to ask'
Latin - _quaerere_ 'to look for, to ask'

Question to Hungarian speakers (it seems to be a lot here ): can _kér _also mean 'to want'? Because I just came across Encolpius' post on my thread, and he translates 'Who wants tea?' as _Ki kér téat?_. If so, it would be a word coincidence with Spanish _querer._


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## Encolpius

Hello Diamant, yes, it is true, there are a lot of Hungarians (and Catalans) here if we take into consideration we make only the 0,25% of World population, then there should be at least 80 Chinese members here... ...where are they? 
I think I confused you...but I am trying to translate the meaning of sentences and not to make a literal translation....
kér means "pedir" or "bitten" (English do not have a special word for it)...to want is "akar" in Hungarian and you might hear the verb sounds more rough that's why I think we avoid the verb "akar [want] in polite speech...but the Portuguse quer [ker] and Hungarian kér might be the same coincidence...after all, not to disappoint you, kér can mean want... But I remember one coincidence now: 
*on *that [English] x az*on* [Hungarian; of course it is at the end of the word]


----------



## ancalimon

English word "character" (from Greek word "kharakter" meaning "engraved mark")

Turkic:

çerttir: (it's a sentence) It translates to English as "it's an engraving made of notches", "it's a marking".



> Proto-Turkic: *čert-
> 
> Altaic etymology: Altaic etymology
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Meaning: 1 to cut (off edges), make notches 2 to click 3 to pinch 4 to pinch (a musical instrument)
> Russian meaning: 1 обрезать (края), делать зарубки 2 щелкать 3 щипать 4 играть на щипковом инструменте
> Karakhanid: čert- 1 (MK)
> Tatar: čirt- 2, 3, čärdäk-lä- 'to hew'
> Uzbek: čert- 2, 4
> Azerbaidzhan: čärt- 1, 2
> Turkmen: čirt- 1, 3
> Khakassian: sirte- 2
> Shor: širte- 2
> Oyrat: čert- 1, 2
> Halaj: čirt- 2
> Chuvash: śart 'a dent for inserting bottom into banded vessels'
> Kirghiz: čert- 2, 4
> Kazakh: šert- 2, 4
> Noghai: šert- 2, 3, 4
> Bashkir: sirt- 2, 3
> Balkar: čert- 'to mark'
> Karakalpak: šert- 2, 4
> Kumyk: čert- 1, 2, 4
> Comments: VEWT 105, EDT 428, Федотов  2, 87-88. The semantic development here is 'to make notches, indents'  > 'break the edge', 'pinch' (whence 'to click with fingers') - not  onomatopoetic, as suggested by Clauson.



Other similarities are:

kara: black
karala: to draw, to line through


----------



## Encolpius

German -- Tschö! [tʃøː] -- Northern variant of the stand German greeting Tschüss [etym: < adieu]
Hungarian -- Cső! [tʃøː] -- slang variant of the standard Hungarian greeting Szia [etym: < csöves - hippy]


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## franknagy

German Viertel = 1/4 of anything.
Hungarian fertály óra = 1/4 hours.


----------



## Encolpius

False example again.  the Hungarian word fertály comes form the German Viertel....you haven't understood the sense of this thread at all


----------



## 810senior

According to this site Japanese and Hungarian seems to share some words similar to the pronunciation(I hope Encolpius would get interested in this) 

For example(cited from the above site):

Hungarian : Japanese
*korai *: 古来(korai: ancient)
*mamma *: まんま(mamma: a meal, almost used in baby talk)
*ide *: 出で(ide: come here)
*új *: 初い(ui: first)
*hull *: 降る(furu: fall, pour down)
*okol *: 怒る(okoru: get angry with)
*kucorog *: くつろぐ(kutsurogu: loosen up)
*só *: 塩(sio: salt)
*sótlan *: 塩たらん(siotaran: lack of salt)
*szék *: 席(seki: seat)
*utó* : 後(ato: after, behind)
*áll *: ある(aru: be, exist)
*gurul *: ぐるぐる(guruguru: going around)
*üt *: 打つ(utsu: to hit)


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## Encolpius

Thank you for sharing... As you can see I am rather strict with choosing my examples I think I'd choose *sótlan - siotaran* and *szék - seki* only, but even those two examples are very fascinating.


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## Dymn

Japanese -  見る _miru_ - 'to see, to look'
Catalan & Spanish - _mirar_ - 'to look'


----------



## Gavril

English *flour *is etymologically the same word as *flower *(perhaps because flour is finely ground grain, and was therefore seen as the "flower" of this grain)

Welsh *blawd *"flour" is formally identical to *blawd *"flowers, blossoms", but the two are not from the same root: the word meaning "flour" comes from earlier *_mlāt_- (related to _malu _"grind"), whereas the word meaning "flowers" is from earlier *_blāt_- (related to English _blade, bloom_, Greek _phýllon _"leaf", etc.)

Although the two Welsh words are not a semantic match, someone might mistakenly draw a historical connection between them on the analogy of word-pairs like English _flour_/_flower_.


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## franknagy

Hungarian "eleven" means "vivid", "living" not 11 as in English.
HU "ragad" verb. "It is sticking" <--> EN "rugged".
HU "liszt"=flour EN "list" RU "лист"= leav(es).
HU "kasza" = scythe RU "коса" = ponytail.
HU "más" = other SP "más" =but, more.


----------



## 123xyz

Gavril said:


> English *flour *is etymologically the same word as *flower *(perhaps because flour is finely ground grain, and was therefore seen as the "flower" of this grain)
> 
> Welsh *blawd *"flour" is formally identical to *blawd *"flowers, blossoms", but the two are not from the same root: the word meaning "flour" comes from earlier *_mlāt_- (related to _malu _"grind"), whereas the word meaning "flowers" is from earlier *_blāt_- (related to English _blade, bloom_, Greek _phýllon _"leaf", etc.)
> 
> Although the two Welsh words are not a semantic match, someone might mistakenly draw a historical connection between them on the analogy of word-pairs like English _flour_/_flower_.



This reminds me of an interesting coincidence between Hungarian and Macedonian (and other Slavic languages):

цвет (flower) - свет (world) - светол (bright)
virág (flower) - világ (world) - világos (bright)

So, in both Hungarian and Macedonian, the words for "flower" and "world" differ by only one letter, while being otherwise unrelated etymologically (for Macedonian, I am certain of this, though I leave room for doubt in connection with the Hungarian pair). Additionally, in both languages, an adjective meaning "bright" can be derived from the word for "world".


franknagy said:


> Hungarian "eleven" means "vivid", "living" not 11 as in English.
> HU "ragad" verb. "It is sticking" <--> EN "rugged".
> HU "liszt"=flour EN "list" RU "лист"= leav(es).
> HU "kasza" = scythe RU "коса" = ponytail.
> HU "más" = other SP "más" =but, more.



In Russian, "коса" likewise means "scythe", and the "kasza" <> "коса" pair doesn't match the OP's requirements, since "kasza" is a Slavic loanword in Hungarian.


----------



## Dragonseed

A very simple one - the Chinese 的(pronounced 'de') has the exact same meaning as the French "de" ("of", as used as a genitif). Except their construction is opposite:
La maison de Claire ("the house of Clair")
Clair 的房子("Clair -de- house")


----------



## Encolpius

123xyz said:


> This reminds me of an interesting coincidence between Hungarian and Macedonian (and other Slavic languages):
> 
> цвет (flower) - свет (world) - светол (bright)
> virág (flower) - világ (world) - világos (bright)
> 
> So, in both Hungarian and Macedonian, the words for "flower" and "world" differ by only one letter, while being otherwise unrelated etymologically (for Macedonian, I am certain of this, though I leave room for doubt in connection with the Hungarian pair). Additionally, in both languages, an adjective meaning "bright" can be derived from the word for "world".



We have discussed it here in the past....I think here


----------



## Encolpius

I do not know if it is a coincidence. 
Latin number 10 -- X
Chinese/Japanese number 10 -- 十


----------



## Gavril

Possible coincidences (I haven't been able to find the etymology of any of these words so far):


Armenian *բացի* [Western pronunciation: _*patsi*_] ”except (for)”

Finnish _*paitsi *_”except, besides”

---

Armenian *բայց *[Western pronunciation: _*p*__*ayts*_] “but, however”

Slovene _*pa*__*č *_„however“


----------



## Encolpius

Hungarian --- szí(v) [see]
Chinese --- 吸 [see]
meaning - to suck


----------



## ken_yoh

Japanese: Do (戸)               English: Door
Japanese: Kan  (缶)             English: Can


----------



## franknagy

Hungarian 
*paci *= horse in children's language,
*pacsi* = the dog gives a paw to a human.


----------



## ancalimon

In Turkish

pati = the dog gives a paw to a human.  It also means paw.


----------



## apmoy70

lettore said:


> A funny one.
> Italian: poltróna (an armchair).
> Russian: пол-трóна (half a throne).
> Even the stress is the same. But the sound [l] is different: in Italian it must be soft (I think), in Russian it is hard.
> Unfortunately, I don't know how to explain the difference between _soft_ and _hard_ consonants.
> When I imagine a throne (трон), I always imagine an _armchair_ that has a _king_ in it. So, you have…
> 
> Good night!


Both of them are actually from the Latin *pullus* (masc.) --> _foal, young animal_ which produced the Late Lat. pulliter > It. poltro/poltrona. We have it too, as *«πολυθρόνα»* [poliˈθrona] (fem.) --> _armchair_. 
It's a Latin loan, but the word has been regarded falsely as being a derivative of the Gr. *«θρόνος»* --> _throne_. In Greek too we take it as a compound, formed with the joining together of two ancient Greek words; the combining form *«πολυ-» pŏlu-* of Classical Gr. adj. *«πολύς» pŏlús* --> _much, many, often_ (PIE *p(e)lh₁- _many_) + Classical masc. noun *«θρόνος» tʰrónŏs* --> _throne, seat, chair of state, judge's seat_ (possibly from PIE *dʰer- _to hold, support_). Unfortunately that's paretymology (pardon my neologism). The correct spelling of the word in Greek is *«πολιθρόνα»* (since it's a foreign loan).


----------



## yellowfrican

Riffian berber : Ashqor : Axe 
                           Oshon : Wolf
Basque          : Aizkora : Axe
                           Osson : Wolf


----------



## Gavril

Slovene _pustiti_ "to leave (a place, person, etc.)" < _pust_- < possibly from the same root as Greek _paúein _"to stop"

Finnish _poistua_ "to leave (a place)" < mediopassive form of _poistaa_ "to remove" < _pois_ "away"


----------



## ancalimon

In Turkish the verb "pıs" "pus" means "to be afraid and hide behind something or leave a place".  It's also related with "pusu" meaning "ambush".


----------



## ancalimon

While reading the thread about "nexus" here: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=3003611  I spotted a coincidence.


> nexus (n.)
> 
> 1660s, "bond, link, means of communication," from Latin nexus "that which ties or binds together," past participle of nectere "to bind," from PIE root *ned- "to bind, tie" (see net (n.)).



Turkic:



> Proto-Turkic: *dẹg-
> Meaning: 1 to cost, to be worth 2 price 3 to change, exchange 4 allotment, portion 5 worth 6 change, exchange





> Proto-Turkic: *dẹg-
> Meaning: to touch, to reach





> Proto-Turkic: *dAk-
> Meaning: to bind to, add to




This lead to me spotting another coincidence

*bow ~ tie*...  See:



> Proto-Turkic: *b(i)ā-
> 
> Meaning: 1 to bind 2 to fasten 3 bundle 4 bond, rope
> 
> 
> Proto-Turkic: *bog-
> Meaning: 1 to tie up 2 to strangle 3 to hinder 4 bundle



And this also led me to spot another coincidence:



> bog (v.)
> 
> 
> "to sink (something or someone) in a bog," c. 1600, from bog (n.). Intransitive use from c. 1800. Related: Bogged; bogging.





> Proto-Turkic: *bog-
> Meaning: 1 to tie up 2 to strangle 3 to hinder 4 bundle





> Proto-Turkic: *bok
> Meaning: dirt, dung



And  This led me to spot another coincidence:



> bog (n.)
> 
> 
> c. 1500, from Gaelic and Irish bogach "bog," from adjective bog "soft, moist," from PIE *bhugh-, from root *bheugh- "to bend" (see bow (v.)). Bog-trotter applied to the wild Irish from 1670s.





> Proto-Turkic: *bük-
> 
> Meaning: 1 to bow, bend 2 to curve, bend, wrap smth.



Then this led me to spot several other coincidences like:


> curve (v.)
> 
> 
> early 15c. (implied in curved), from Latin curvus "crooked, curved, bent," and curvare "to bend," both from PIE root *(s)ker- (2) "to turn, bend" (see ring (n.)).



Turkic: kıvır (curve), kıvırcık (curly), kavra (cover)

There are maybe tens of thousands of examples like this.   I think I can find a coincidence like these for every single word of Indo-European languages.

But let's leave them for another time.


----------



## Gavril

English *ruin* (noun meaning "decayed or destroyed building or settlement") < Latin _ruina_ "a fall, a collapse" < _ruere_ "to fall"
Finnish *raunio* "ruin" < the same root as Old Icelandic _hraun _"stony ground" (later "lava")

(This does not apply to the verb _ruin_ meaning "destroy", or to the noun _ruin_ insofar as it means "destruction"; the Finnish words for these meanings do not resemble the English ones at all.)


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## 810senior

Japanese: _happi_(法被, *traditional Japanese coat*, mostly dressed in the festival)
English: happy

Japanese: _gussuri_(adv. meaning *soundly*, mostly used with a verb *nemuru *or *neru*, e.g. _*gussuri *neru_, to sleep *soundly*)
English: good sleep

Japanese: kasu(scum)
French: (je) casse(I break)


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## franknagy

Hungarian "mez" = T-shirt worn by soccer players.


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## ancalimon

franknagy said:


> Hungarian "mez" = T-shirt worn by soccer players.



Turkish

bez :cloth, rags, fabric


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## UkrainianPolyglot

Latin/Romance habeo and English/Germanic have. Both mean "to have" and are used as auxiliaries. Apparently these are NOT cognates.


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## UkrainianPolyglot

Hebrew "Shesh" and "Sheeva" and English "Six" and "Seven." Both mean six and seven.


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## franknagy

Hungarian:
_Puszta_ (noun) is a grassland biome on the Great Hungarian Plain.
_Pusztít _(verb) = rave, destroy.


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## ancalimon

franknagy said:


> Hungarian:
> _Puszta_ (noun) is a grassland biome on the Great Hungarian Plain.
> _Pusztít _(verb) = rave, destroy.



The word means "plains",  a vast wilderness of grass and bushes. The name comes from an adjective  of the same form, meaning "waste, barren, bare". Puszta is ultimately a  Slavic loanword in Hungarian (compare Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian _pust_ and Polish _pusty_, both meaning _bare_ or _empty_).

Turkish:

Boş : Empty, bare
Boz : To undo, to destroy, to damage, to ruin, to spoil, greyish, blurry, hazy, darkish, ...
Bozkır : plains



> Proto-Turkic: *boĺ
> Altaic etymology: Altaic etymology
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Meaning: free, empty
> Russian meaning: свободный, пустой
> Old Turkic: boš (OUygh.)
> Karakhanid: boš (MK, KB)
> Turkish: boš
> Tatar: buš
> Middle Turkic: boš (Sangl.)
> Uzbek: bụš
> Uighur: boš
> Sary-Yughur: bos, pos
> Azerbaidzhan: boš
> Turkmen: boš
> Khakassian: pos
> Shor: pos
> Oyrat: boš
> Halaj: boš
> Chuvash: požъ
> Yakut: bosxo (*boš-ka)
> Dolgan: bosko 'a little'
> Tuva: boš
> Tofalar: bo'š
> Kirghiz: boš
> Kazakh: bos
> Noghai: bos
> Bashkir: buš
> Balkar: boš
> Gagauz: boš
> Karaim: boš, bos
> Karakalpak: bos
> Salar: boš
> Kumyk: boš
> Comments: EDT 376, VEWT 82, ЭСТЯ 2, 203-204, Мудрак Дисс. 126, Федотов 1, 457, Stachowski  63. The Chuv. form has a regular reflex, presupposing a final vowel.  Turk. *boĺa-n- > bošan- > Mong. busani- 'become empty, poor' (KW 63); *boĺ-u-g 'permission' > Mong. bošuɣ (Clark 1980, 41).
> 
> Proto-Turkic: *boŕ ( ~ ō)
> Altaic etymology: Altaic etymology
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Meaning: grey
> Russian meaning: серый
> Old Turkic: boz (OUygh.)
> Karakhanid: boz (MK)
> Turkish: boz
> Tatar: büz
> Middle Turkic: boz (Sangl.)
> Uzbek: bụz
> Uighur: boz, bos
> Sary-Yughur: poz
> Azerbaidzhan: boz
> Turkmen: boz
> Oyrat: bos
> Kirghiz: boz
> Kazakh: boz
> Noghai: boz
> Bashkir: buδ
> Balkar: boz
> Gagauz: boz, bōz
> Karakalpak: boz
> Kumyk: boz
> Comments: EDT 388, VEWT 82, TMN 2, 335, ЭСТЯ 2, 171-173, Лексика 605. Turk. > Old Russ. bosɨj, dial. búsɨj, busój, see Аникин 147 (with lit.).


----------



## franknagy

The remainders of a building are called in Hungarian *rom*.
The spirit made of cane is *rum*.
Where does the name of Czech tale hero *Rum*cájs come from?


----------



## ancalimon

Turkish:

attach:  tak


----------



## Encolpius

Chinese (dialect?): 阿爸 [apa] - dad
Hungarian: apa - dad


----------



## ancalimon

Can't tell if they are coincidences or not but here are some very similar words and other semantically related words:

English: sword (semantically related with "to kill")
Latin: gladius
Proto-Turkic: *Kɨlɨ̄č
Turkish: kılıç
Proto-Turkic: *sAj- (to pierce)
Turkish: savur (to brandish, to hurl)

English: to hit
Proto-Turkic: *ur-
Turkish: vur

English: gladiator

English: clash (semantically related with sword)
Proto-Turkic: *gErüĺ- (wrestle, struggle, fight)
Turkish: güreş (wrestle, struggle, fight)

English: -ator suffix
Turkish: -eder suffix (it means "the one whose profession is", "the one who does"...  So:

gladiator :    güreş eder   :   the one who wrestles, fights

English: clan
Turkic: Oqlan (clan consisting of Oq people (OQ meant one who has come of age, one who has become an adult. It also means arrow. When one became an adult, he-she was ready to move out of the parents' house. he-she shot an arrow to the sky and according to where the arrow landed, the Oq migrated in that direction.). The word was used for "children" in the past. Later oğlan became "a boy". A girl is now called "kız" in Oghuz dialect and "gır" in Ogur dialect.


Turkish: oku (read)
Turkish: öğrenci (student)
Turkish: öğretmen (teacher)
Turkish: okul (school). The word may mean "Oq Ol" : Become an Oq: ((the place) where someone becomes an adult)


Clash, gladiator >< güreş, vuruş
sword >< savur, kılıç, güreş
clan >< oq, oğlan,


----------



## franknagy

ancalimon said:


> ...
> Turkish> kıvır (curve), kıvırcık (curly), kavra (cover)
> Hungarian
> _"Keverem, kavarom, nem kell ész.
> Gyere pajtás, légy vegyész!"_
> English:
> "I am stirring it, I am rabbling it, it does not need brain.
> Come on, bre'er, be chemist."


----------



## ilocas2

Czech: *brloh* - lair, den

German: *Bärloch* (Bär + Loch) - bear hole


----------



## Encolpius

Japanes yoi - Hungarian jó = both mean "good"


----------



## Messquito

Chinese: 弟弟 tìti＝younger brother or younger male cousin / Hindi: didi = older sister or older female cousin
Chinese: 媽 mā = mama/mother / Hindi: ma = mother's brother = uncle
English: Papa = daddy / Japanese: papa = daddy~~ baba = grandma
Korean: 언니(eonni) = older sister (used by female) / Japanese: お兄さん(oniisan) = older brother
Chinese: 奶奶(nene) = grandma / Spanish: nene = boy
Chinese: 聖 (shen) = saint -> sound similar to saint in French
Chinese: 堡 (bao) = fort / Germanic languages: -burg/-berg = fort
Chinese: 嚎/號 (hao) = howl (English)
Chinese: 配(pei) = pair (English)
Chinese: 潑(puo) = pour (English)
Chinese: 速(su) = fast / English: soon
Chinese: 你(nee) = thee (Ol'En)
Chinese: 屎(shi) = shit (noun)
Chinese: 瀉(shie) = shit (verb)
Chinese: 壯(trong) = strong
Chinese: 沒有(meiyo)=no ->negative / Latin: mal = bad ->negative
Chinese: 低(di) = low / Latin: de- --> decrease/decline
Chinese: 感謝(ganxie) = thanks / Italian: Grazie = thanks
Chinese: 球(chyo) = ball / Italian: cio = football
Chinese: 太棒(tai ban) = too good / French: très bon = so good
Chinese: 石頭(shito) = stone
Chinese: 馬(ma) = horse / English: mare = female horse
Chinese: 淒厲(chili) = chilly (English)
Chinese: 歿(muo) = dead / English: mortal = subject to death
Chinese: 卑(bei) = low/inferior = basic
Chinese: 塔(ta) = tower
Chinese: 訴(su) = sue
Chinese: 拖(tuo) = tow
Chinese: 皮(pi) = peel
Chinese: 被(bei) = by
Chinese: 依賴(ilai) = rely
Chinese: 圖騰(tuteng) = totem
Chinese: 咀(chü) = chew
Chinese: 焙(bei) = bake
Chinese: 盤(pan) = plate = pan
Chinese: 所以(suoyi) = so
Chinese: 頌(song) = praise = carol = song
Chinese: 旦(dan) = dawn
Chinese: 其他的(chitade) = other / Latvian: citādi = other
Old Ch: 汝(ru) = thou = you
Hokkien: 那裡 hya = there <-> 這裏 jya = here
Hokkien: 提去 tehki = take it (English)
Hokkien: 濕(sip) = sip (English)
Hokkien: ca = cut (English)
Hokkien: 水 (sui) = water / English: sweat
Hokkien: 小(sho) = short/small
Japanese: おい！(oi) = hi / Portuguese/English/Spanish: oi = hi
Japanese: ありがとう(arigatou) = thank you / Portuguese: Obrigado = thank you
Japanese: 不倫(fulin) = affair / English: fling = short sexual relationship

Chinese: 分梨(=cutting the pear) sounds the same as 分離(=part/separate) / English: "Cut the pear" sounds like "cut the pair(separate, isn't it?)"
Swallow =  燕(yàn)(a bird) / swallow = 咽(yàn)(a verb)
bow = 弓(gon)(a tool) / bow = 躬(gon)(verb)


----------



## franknagy

Hungarian méz=honey -Eng. maze (Hun. labirintus)


----------



## Encolpius

Megint egy újabb sületlenség.


----------



## apmoy70

MoGr *«καλώ»* [kaˈlo] --> _to call someone, communicate by telephone, summon, name_ < ancient Gr *«καλῶ» kălô* (same meanings, except for calling someone on the phone of course) from the PIE root *klh₁- cognate with the Latin clāmāre.

Eng. *call* --> _to beckon, summon, communicate by phone with someone_ < OEng. *ceallian *--> _to call, shout_ from the PIE root *ḱleu- cognate with the Latin glōria.


----------



## ancalimon

^In Turkic dialects we use a similar word to call someone.  In Turkish we say "gel" (come!).



> Proto-Turkic: *gẹl-
> Altaic etymology: Altaic etymology
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Meaning: to come
> Russian meaning: приходить
> Old Turkic: kel- (Orkh., Yen., OUygh.)
> Karakhanid: kel- (MK, KB)
> Turkish: _gel-_
> Tatar: kil-
> Middle Turkic: kẹl- (Abush., Pav. C.)
> Uzbek: kel-
> Uighur: käl-/kil-
> Sary-Yughur: kel-
> Azerbaidzhan: gäl-
> Turkmen: _gel-_
> Khakassian: kil-
> Shor: kel- (R)
> Oyrat: kel-
> Halaj: käl-
> Chuvash: kil-
> Yakut: kel-
> Dolgan: kel-
> Tuva: kel-
> Tofalar: kel-
> Kirghiz: kel-
> Kazakh: kel-
> Noghai: kel-
> Bashkir: kil-
> Balkar: kel-
> Gagauz: _gel-_
> Karaim: kel-
> Karakalpak: kel-
> Salar: _gel-,_ gej-
> Kumyk: _gel-_
> Comments: VEWT 248; EDT 715, ЭСТЯ 3, 14-16, 31-32, Stachowski 143. The Chuv. and Yak. vowels correspond irregularly.


----------



## Dymn

English: _*much*_
c. 1200, worn down by loss of unaccented last syllable from Middle English _muchel_ "large, much," from Old English _micel_ "great in amount or extent," from Proto-Germanic _*mekilaz_, from PIE _*meg-_ "great"

Spanish: _*mucho*_
from Latin _multus _"much, many," from PIE _*ml-to-_, from root _*mel-_ "strong, great, numerous"


----------



## Gavril

apmoy70 said:


> Eng. *call* --> _to beckon, summon, communicate by phone with someone_ < OEng. *ceallian *--> _to call, shout_ from the PIE root *ḱleu- cognate with the Latin glōria.



Are you sure that *_kleu_- is the most widely accepted etymology for English _call_? The English word would regularly come from a root beginning in *_g_-, not in *_k_-: I have seen it connected to Welsh _galw_ "call", Slovene _glas_ "voice", Latin _gallus_ "rooster", etc.

Anyway, here are two other examples to add to the list:

Portuguese _*louvar*_ “praise”, stem _louva_- (pronounced [lo'va]) < Latin _laudare_
Old English _*lofian*_ “praise”, stem _lofa_- ['lova] < Germanic *_lubojan_

Irish _*finna*-_ “find, find out” < IE *_wind_-, nasalized form of *weid- “to see”/”know”
Icelandic *finna* “to find” < Germanic *_finþan <_ IE *_pent_-, as seen in Latin _pons_, _pont_- “bridge”, Slovene _pot_ “way, journey”, etc.


----------



## francisgranada

Encolpius said:


> Czech -- kutat (prospect for something) [origin? not Hungarian]
> Hungarian -- kutat (might have similar meaning) [origin? not Czech ]
> That's a quiz for Francis..


Better late than never  ...

The Hungarian _kutat _is a causative from a separately non-documented verbal stem *_ku-, _supposedly of onomatopoeic origin, related to the noise caused by searching/groping after something.

The Czech verb _kutat(i) _derives  from the Slavic noun _kǫtъ _(Czech _kout_)  "angle, corner".

Hungarian _*tető *_(< Hung. verb _tet- _"to seem, to be visible")
Italian *tetto *(< Lat. verb _tegere _"to cover")
Both mean (among others) "roof".

Hungarian *lék *(< probably Uralic _*lek-_) - "split where the water can pass through, etc ..."
English _*leak *_(< Proto Germanic _*lek_- < PIE _*leg-_)

(I hope these examples were not yet mentioned)


----------



## Gavril

Slavic _*po*_ - preposition with a range of different meanings, including ”on” in some contexts (e.g. Slovene _po reki_ ”on the river”, _po ulici_ ”on/in the street”) < IE *_po_, related to *_apo_ “from”
Scandinavian _*på*_ ”on” (as in Norwegian _på elva_ ”on the river”), from Norse _upp_ ”up” + _á_ ”on”, from IE *_uper_ + *_an-_

English _*one*_ (impersonal pronoun, as in ”One doesn't do that here”) < _one _(numeral) < IE *_oinos_
French _*on*_ (impersonal pronoun) < Latin _homo_


----------



## ilocas2

francisgranada said:


> The Czech verb _kutat(i) _derives from the Slavic noun _kǫtъ _(Czech _kout_) "angle, corner".



According to Czech etymological dictionary, Czech _kutat_ is related to _kutit_ and it's derived from Proto-Slavic _*kutiti_ which is etymologically unclear, it may be from Indo-European _*keu-t-_ which is from _*keu-_ (to bend)


----------



## franknagy

NewtonCircus said:


> _Heiß_ = Hot in German
> _Hees_ = Hoarse in Dutch


_Hess_ [pronunced with -sh-sh] in Hungarian is said to a flying bird, to chase it away.
Sicc <->  [sch-i-tz] for cat.


darush said:


> Persian(Farsi): ki means who


Exact match with Hungarian* ki*=who!


----------



## Unoverwordinesslogged

Hullo,

Haven't bothered working out if what is being ask is nearest to false-cognates, false-friends, or something on its own but here is a link showing many seemingly alike looking British and French placename elements which are in truth from different roots.

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/a-tale-of-five-barbys.2957097/


----------



## apmoy70

Gavril said:


> Are you sure that *_kleu_- is the most widely accepted etymology for English _call_? The English word would regularly come from a root beginning in *_g_-, not in *_k_-: I have seen it connected to Welsh _galw_ "call", Slovene _glas_ "voice", Latin _gallus_ "rooster", etc


Thanks Gavril, I'll check it.
Meanwhile:
Hebrew _teraph_ (תרף )/_teraphim_ (תרפים ) --> _disgraceful thing(s), idol(s)_ (with obscure etymology)
Greek _τέρας_ [ˈteɾas] --> _monster, monstrosity_ (PIE *kʷer- _omen_ cf Lith. kerai, _sorcery, charm_)

Hebrew _n'siyah_ (נְסִיעָה ) --> _journey, travel_
Greek (Classical) _νίσομαι_ (nísŏmai) --> _to travel_ (PIE *nes- _to return_)


----------



## Gavril

Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> Hullo,
> 
> Haven't bothered working out if what is being ask is nearest to false-cognates, false-friends, or something on its own



The thread is looking for words that match semantically, and are very similar (or match) in pronunciation, but that have different etymological origins.

The example you link to (involving placenames) is problematic because of the "semantic match"-criterion, just like all examples involving proper nouns: unless there is a reason (and there could be, in some individual cases) to think that these placenames were named after the same person/thing/etc. then I don't think they fit the original question of this thread.

For example, the Chinese people refer to themselves as the _*Han*_, and there was also a group called the_ *Han*_ from which some of the modern-day Koreans are descended (the same term might be present in _*Han*guk,_ the native name of South Korea). This qualifies as a coincidence (assuming that the two _Han_-words are unrelated) because there are observable semantic patterns in the names that many ethnicities call themselves: some groups use a term meaning "people, human beings" to designate themselves, others use positive epithets ("the brave ones"), etc. Therefore, there are grounds to suspect that the two peoples called _Han _might be called that for the same reason, even if they turn out not to be.


----------



## franknagy

Swedish *far *= in English father.
Hungarian *far* = in English the bottom of somebody.
--------------------
Swedish _mar _= in English mother.
Hungarian _mar_ = 1. in English the withers (of a horse),
                       2. verb for the effect of a strong acid like HCl, H2SO4.


----------



## wtrmute

Gavril said:


> Spanish *ser* "to be" (infinitive) and *soy* "I am" appear to come from the same root, just like _dar_ "to give" and _doy_ "I give". But, in fact, _ser _comes from earlier _seer_, which comes from Latin _sedere_ "to sit", whereas _soy_ comes from Latin _sum_, whose infinitive was _esse_.



It's not necessarily the case that Spanish _ser_ comes from Vulgar _sedere_; there is also the possibility that it might come from _*essere_, which is the Vulgar form of _esse_ and yields Italian _essere_ and French _être_.

If you compare _soy_ and _sea_ (1s Present Indicative and Subjunctive, respectively) you could say for sure that they come from different roots (_sum_ and _sedeam_, respectively — the Subjunctive counterpart of _sum_ is _sim_ in the Classical tongue).

Also, from Japanese and Spanish:

jp 舐める /nameru/ "to lick" ≈ es _lamer_ "to lick".  It is very common for /l/ and /n/ to alternate in languages by processes of nasalization and denasalization: confront pt _lembrar < nembrar < _la_ memorare_.


----------



## Gavril

wtrmute said:


> It's not necessarily the case that Spanish _ser_ comes from Vulgar _sedere_; there is also the possibility that it might come from _*essere_, which is the Vulgar form of _esse_ and yields Italian _essere_ and French _être_.



If _ser_ were purely from *_essere,_ this wouldn't account for the doubled vowel in older Spanish _seer_ (now simplified to _ser_). Of course, _ser_/_seer_ may also have been contaminated (i.e. influenced) by the form *_essere_, if this infinitive form ever existed in Iberian Romance (I'm not sure if it did).


franknagy said:


> Swedish *far *= in English father.
> Hungarian *far* = in English the bottom of somebody.
> --------------------
> Swedish _mar _= in English mother.
> Hungarian _mar_ = 1. in English the withers (of a horse),
> 2. verb for the effect of a strong acid like HCl, H2SO4.



These word-pairs do not match semantically, only phonetically. This thread is looking for words that coincide both phonetically and semantically: an example of this would be Hungarian _ház_ and English _house_.

Respectfully, I don't think examples like these (_mor_ : _mar_, _méz_ : _maze_, etc.) belong on this thread, unless you think that it is likely for one meaning to change into the other -- e.g. for a noun meaning "honey" (Hungarian _méz_) to change into a noun meaning "maze" (English _maze_), or vice versa.


----------



## AutumnOwl

franknagy said:


> *Swedish mar = in English mother*.
> Hungarian _mar_ = 1. in English the withers (of a horse),


The Swedish word _mar_ does not mean mother, *mor/moder *is the Swedish word for mother.

The word *mar-* in Swedish is connected with sea and water, for example mareld (seafire) - milky seas effect or mareel. There are also the word *mara, *meaning witch or mare, as in *mardröm *(nightmare).



franknagy said:


> "boy" and "daughter", respectively.
> They were borrowed from Gypsy: "csávó" and *"csaj*", respectively.


And Swedish borrowed *tjej* for girl/woman/female. The word _tjej_ can be used about females from 0 to at least middle age.


----------



## luitzen

On a somewhat related tangent. The other day I was watching volleyball (Bulgaria-Germany) with my Bulgarian girlfriend and I hear them shout "Bulgari, you nazi" and I ask her what's up with that. Turns out the Bulgarian word юнаци means heroes.


AutumnOwl said:


> The Swedish word _mar_ does not mean mother, *mor/moder *is the Swedish word for mother.
> 
> The word *mar-* in Swedish is connected with sea and water, for example mareld (seafire) - milky seas effect or mareel. There are also the word *mara, *meaning witch or mare, as in *mardröm *(nightmare).


Talking about horses, once I saw on a FB page of a Norwegian friend/acquaintance a picture of a baby horse (foal) and somewhere in the accompanying text I read the word "happe" (I think). Then I was thinking about how we use the word "hoppe" in West Frisian as an affectionate form for horse and I wondered whether these two words are related. Is the word also used in Swedish? Is it used for horse in general (or mare, stallion, foal) or just affectionately/to call a horse?


----------



## Copperknickers

I found a good one recently:

English: 'chick': slang term for a woman - derives from 'chicken', which ultimately comes from an onamatopoeiac rendering of the sound made by a chicken.
Spanish: 'chica': slang term for a woman - derives from the Latin 'cicero' meaning chickpea (the 'chick' in 'chickpea' also derives from cicero, and is completely unrelated to 'chicken'.)


----------



## Gavril

Spanish _*nada *_[naða] “nothing” , in some cases also “not” (e.g. _nada mal_ “not (at all) bad”), comes from the Latin phrase _rem_ _natam _“(any)thing born”, from which the word _rem_ later dropped out

English _*nought *_[nɑt]/[nɔt] “nothing” and the negative adverb _*not *_are pronounced the same way and are etymologically the same word, both coming from Old English _nā wiht_ “not a thing”


----------



## luitzen

Copperknickers said:


> I found a good one recently:
> 
> English: 'chick': slang term for a woman - derives from 'chicken', which ultimately comes from an onamatopoeiac rendering of the sound made by a chicken.
> Spanish: 'chica': slang term for a woman - derives from the Latin 'cicero' meaning chickpea (the 'chick' in 'chickpea' also derives from cicero, and is completely unrelated to 'chicken'.)


The same word exists in other Germanic languages (e.g. Dutch kuiken and kieken). According to Wiktionary it's derived from Proto-Germanic *kiukīną (and no origin for this is given), according to etymonline it's derived from the root *keuk + diminutive suffix (but maybe *kiukīną is also derived from this *keuk root, such that Wiktionary is less complete), which in turn is onomatopoeic.

The Latin word for chickpea is cicer. Cicero is derived from cicer and given as an honorific name to Marcus Tullius Cicero, a well known Roman politician. Cicer was used as a slang word for testicle (as you probably can imagine). cicer is derived from Proto-Indoeuropean *ḱiḱer which means pea(s) (so chickpea basically means pea pea) and that's where it stops.

For me it seems really hard to believe that it would go from that meaning to obtain the meaning chica currently has. According to Wiktionary, chica is derived from Latin ciccum 'proverbially worthless object, trifle, bagatelle' (nice compliment btw), which in turn stems from Ancient Greek κικκος. This is where Wiktionary's etymology stops. I enter the word in Google together with 'etymology' and I find an Albanian website that links it to Italian gallo, from Latin gallus, meaning rooster.

Back to Wiktionary gallus should be derived from *golH-so, meaning voice, cry. English call should also be derived from this. It becomes very obscure at this point, but the conclusion seems to be that the word chicken is ultimately derived from an onomatopoeia while the word chica is derived from a male chicken (and ultimately from voice, cry).

So the actual coincidence is that chica is derived from a word meaning male chicken, but that this word and the English word chicken do not have the same origin.

But, in the end, what do we know? Nobody really knows how Proto-Indoeuropean was like and we can never really know whether chicken has an onomatopoeic origin or that *kiukīną/*keuk and *golH-so share an even more distant origin.

What do we know about the chicken. According to Wikipedia, the earliest known documentation occurred in Northern China 8000 BCE. It also says that "Fowl had been known in Egypt since the mid-15th century BC". Drawings from Europe from the 7th century picturing chickens are known to exist, but in Ancient Greece, chickens were still a luxury.

The oldest texts containing words in any Indo-European language date to 1850-1700, but estimations for a common Indo-European language range from the 7th to the 4th century BCE. While the first Proto-Indo-Europeans would probably have known about chickens, they were not common and the words for chickens and roosters might as well be loaned from another language that already made a distinction between male and female chickens, but whose origins are ultimately the same.

So word coincindence? Maybe not.


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## Gavril

luitzen said:


> For me it seems really hard to believe that it would go from that meaning to obtain the meaning chica currently has. According to Wiktionary, chica is derived from Latin ciccum 'proverbially worthless object, trifle, bagatelle' (nice compliment btw), which in turn stems from Ancient Greek κικκος. This is where Wiktionary's etymology stops. I enter the word in Google together with 'etymology' and I find an Albanian website that links it to Italian gallo, from Latin gallus, meaning rooster.



_kikkos_ meant "the thin membrane surrounding the grains of a pomegranate", hence "something unimportant, worthless". My source for this is Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary, which mentions _kikkos_ in the entry for Latin _ciccus_ (same meaning, possibly based on the Greek word).


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## luitzen

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Is it still related to gallus though?


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## Gavril

Not that I can tell from the Lewis and Short entry. There is no mention of _kikkos_ / _ciccus_ meaning "rooster" or anything else chicken-related.


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## luitzen

I found that connection on an obscure Albanian website. I think I got carried away.


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## Copperknickers

luitzen said:


> I enter the word in Google together with 'etymology' and I find an Albanian website that links it to Italian gallo, from Latin gallus, meaning rooster.



I wouldn't go trusting obscure Albanian websites on a subject like this. But anyway, if your sources are correct:


Hen       {PIE: *keuk -> Proto-Germanic: keukiną -> Middle English: chicken -> English slang: chick}
Rooster  {PIE: ???*glHso??? -> Ancient Greek: ???κικκος??? -> Latin: ciccum -> Spanish: Chica}
Chickpea PIE: *ḱiḱer - > Latin: cicer -> English: chickpea

I'm afraid that that cannot be true. As we know, ciccus means 'pomegranate pip' so I think we can safely exclude it from any connection to chickens. Besides, I am not 100% convinced that there is a Greek word 'κικκος', I can find no mention of it anywhere except that one Lewis and Short dictionary entry, which is from 1879, not exactly the heyday of accurate linguistics. It's not listed in my Ancient Greek dictionary nor any I can find online, so I think it's just an assumption that 'ciccus' sounds like a Greek word rather than a Latin one. Even if that's not true, we know that 'ciccum' clearly comes from 'ciccus' which does definitely mean 'pomegranate pip', so it has nothing to do with chickens, in which case we have:

PIE: *keuk -> Proto-Germanic: keukiną -> Middle English: chicken -> English slang: chick
PIE: ??? -> Ancient Greek: ???κικκος??? -> Latin: ciccum -> Spanish: chica
(PIE: *ḱiḱer - > Latin: cicer -> English: chickpea)

I would not be so quick to rule out a relation between kiker and ciccus, since they both refer to seed pods. So I stand by my original claim. The English word 'chick' is completely unrelated to the Spanish word 'chica', as the latter derives from 'ciccum', and so probably ultimately from *kik-, a PIE stem referring to seed pods.

And if you're wondering how 'ciccus', pomegranate pip, evolved into 'ciccum', worthless thing, it was from a common Latin idiom: 'ciccum non interduim', literally 'I don't care one pomegranate pip' (compare to English 'I don't give a fig'). See Act 2 Scene 4 of Plautus' _Rudens _for example.


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## luitzen

Always interesting to have some discussion.


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## KalAlbè

Haitian Creole : Bouda, and Brazilian Portuguese: Bunda. 
Both terms meaning "buttocks". A rather interesting coincidence indeed.


----------



## Equinozio

Japanese given name Yumi (using the kanji characters 優美) - tenderness, beauty
Tagalog word yumi - tenderness, refinement, delicacy


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## ancalimon

Equinozio said:


> Japanese given name Yumi (using the kanji characters 優美) - tenderness, beauty
> Tagalog word yumi - tenderness, refinement, delicacy



Turkish:

uyum:

concord
harmony
compliance
conformity
consistence
coherence
compatibility
concert
accordance
Seems semantically related.


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## Delvo

Another point on chicken/chick/chica/chickpea: Mexicans often abbreviate "Mejicano" as "chicano" (although they apparently might get offended by it coming from an outsider).


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## Gavril

Eng. _whole_ < Germanic *_haila_- (the "w-" in the English spelling is unetymological) < IE *_koilo_-, cognate with e.g. Slovene _cel_ "whole"

Greek _hólos_ "whole" < IE *_solwo_-, cognate with e.g. Latin _salvus_ "uninjured, safe"


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## Messquito

Die:
English: die
Thai: ตาย [tai]


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## Red Arrow

LilianaB said:


> Pojke is also a boy in Swedish. Would it be of Finno-Ugric origin?


_Poj_ reminds me of ''boy'' and -ke is a Flemish / Swedish diminutive, so I think _pojke_ literally means: little boy.
If that's the case then Finnish borrowed it from Swedish.


Copperknickers said:


> I found a good one recently:
> 
> English: 'chick': slang term for a woman - derives from 'chicken', which ultimately comes from an onamatopoeiac rendering of the sound made by a chicken.
> Spanish: 'chica': slang term for a woman - derives from the Latin 'cicero' meaning chickpea (the 'chick' in 'chickpea' also derives from cicero, and is completely unrelated to 'chicken'.)


Are you sure it isn't borrowed from Spanish? I don't see the link between a woman and a chicken.

Anyways, at 00:14 in this Russian video it sounds like they are saying ''_Qu'est ce-qui se passe d'abord?_''. I wonder if it has a similar meaning.

EDIT: The Latin word ''domus'' means house, and the Czech word ''domov'' means home. But that's probably no coincidence.
Same with the Germanic and Slavic words for milk: melk, mleko, mjölk, мляко, etc...


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## Gavril

Red Arrow :D said:


> _Poj_ reminds me of ''boy'' and -ke is a Flemish / Swedish diminutive, so I think _pojke_ literally means: little boy.
> If that's the case then Finnish borrowed it from Swedish.



I don't think that is possible: Finnish _poika_ has cognates throughout the other Finnic languages (Estonian _poeg_, Veps _poig_, etc.) and in the Udmurt language (_pi_ "boy, son"), which is spoken 2000km to the east of Finland.


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## Copperknickers

Red Arrow :D said:


> Are you sure it isn't borrowed from Spanish? I don't see the link between a woman and a chicken.



Yes, very sure. It is common in the UK to refer to loved ones by animal names: 'rabbit', 'chicken', 'goose', 'duck'. 'Chicken' is still used as a term of endearment in some parts of England, both for women and for children.


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## Red Arrow

Gavril said:


> I don't think that is possible: Finnish _poika_ has cognates throughout the other Finnic languages (Estonian _poeg_, Veps _poig_, etc.) and in the Udmurt language (_pi_ "boy, son"), which is spoken 2000km to the east of Finland.


Okay, thanks for the clarification 


Copperknickers said:


> Yes, very sure. It is common in the UK to refer to loved ones by animal names: 'rabbit', 'chicken', 'goose', 'duck'. 'Chicken' is still used as a term of endearment in some parts of England, both for women and for children.


Really? Wow, I didn't know that.

In Dutch a ''gans'' (=goose) generally means a stupid woman. For example some might say ''Ik ben toch zo'n domme gans.'' (=I'm such a stupid goose.) when they make a mistake.


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## Copperknickers

I believe the same expression is current in American English: 'silly goose'. Although it's a very soft expression, it's almost still a term of endearment. That's not to say all animal words are used endearingly, we have the word 'cow' (rude or unpleasant woman), 'dog' (unattractive woman), 'hen-pecked' (used of a husband who is cowed into submission by his wife), 'scaredy cat', 'chicken' (in the sense of someone being scared of something, which is more common than the term of endearment) etc.


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## igusarov

Red Arrow :D said:


> Anyways, at 00:14 in this Russian video it sounds like they are saying ''_Qu'est ce-qui se passe d'abord?_''. I wonder if it has a similar meaning.


Probably not. They are saying "всех свистать на борт" (vsekh svistat' na bort), which translates as "pipe (call by whistling) everyone aboard!"


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## franknagy

Copperknickers said:


> I believe the same expression is current in American English: 'silly goose'. Although it's a very soft expression, it's almost still a term of endearment. That's not to say all animal words are used endearingly, we have the word 'cow' (rude or unpleasant woman), 'dog' (unattractive woman), 'hen-pecked' (used of a husband who is cowed into submission by his wife), 'scaredy cat', 'chicken' (in the sense of someone being scared of something, which is more common than the term of endearment) etc.



It is interesting that especially the *goose* in an intercultural symbol of stupid women. 
"Buta* liba*"="silly *goose*" in Hungarian. (About young girls.)
"Buta *tyúk*" The *hen* is used over 30 for stupid women.

The *tehén=cow* means in Hungarian fat woman.


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## Red Arrow

An ugly woman is often called a draak (=dragon) in Dutch. I only recently found this out, actually.
It is considered pretty rude.


----------



## Hans Molenslag

Red Arrow :D said:


> An ugly woman is often called a draak (=dragon) in Dutch.


No, that's not correct. There are certain common words to call a woman names based on her looks, if you're into that kind of thing, but 'draak' is not one of them.


----------



## franknagy

The *sárkány*=dragon is used in Hungarian for the mother-in-law, and for cranky wives for ages.
There is a modern verb formed from this noun, used in psicho paperbacks handling the process of transition from nice wifie to _hated xanthippe_:
el*sárkány*osodik.


----------



## Red Arrow

Hans M. said:


> No, that's not correct. There are certain common words to call a woman names based on her looks, if you're into that kind of thing, but 'draak' is not one of them.


You don't believe anything I say : / As I've said in my previous post, I recently found out about it, but that doesn't mean it's a new or unknown word. My parents know what it is, and they are in their 50s. (one is from Antwerp and the other one from Brabant)

This is what I found on Google.
http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/draak


> draak: lastig, onuitstaanbaar persoon; twistzuchtig mens; engerd. Vaak gaat het om een lelijk iemand. Het woord is niet uitsluitend van toepassing op vrouwen. Zo kan men het ook over een _draak van een jongen_ hebben. Het scheldwoord werd reeds opgetekend in de werken van Potgieter.


It does exist, but you can apparantly say it about men too.

And this is from a forum for girls.
wat betekent draak ? - Girlscene Forum


----------



## Encolpius

franknagy said:


> ...el*sárkány*osodik.



never heard


----------



## Hans Molenslag

Red Arrow, you said: "An ugly woman is often called a draak (=dragon) in Dutch." I'm not saying people never say so. With a little bit of verbal creativity, you can basically use any word as a term of abuse in the right context. But 'draak' is not generally used that way, and certainly not _often_, as you put it.



Red Arrow :D said:


> This is what I found on Google.
> http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/draak
> 
> It does exist, but you can apparantly say it about men too.


Exactly my point. This is about both men and women, and it's about nastiness and other negative personality traits. It's not primarily about physical looks. I rest my case.


----------



## Encolpius

Hans M. said:


> With a little bit of verbal creativity, you can basically use any word as a term of abuse in the right context.



I agree.
Tolkien might be an inspiration. "You stupid smaug!, You stupid orc!"  or Shakespeare (cannot recall any old-fashioned word)


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## franknagy

Encolpius said:


> never heard


Még könyvet is írtak ezzel a szóval a címében.
Kézikönyv a nők elsárkányosodásáról · Bartha András · Könyv · Moly


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## Encolpius

yes, Frnak, the Hungarian word is really inspiring I think it is a neologism, the English equivalent could be "dragonization", but I doubt natives would accept it.


----------



## Medune

Portuguese and Japanese

Portuguese *né?*: a contraction of não é? (isn't it?, don't you think?)
Japanese particle *ne*: ね (isn't it?, don't you think?)


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## Gavril

Icelandic _*gaur*_, pronounced [gøyr], slang term for "guy, man"; earlier meaning was "wretched man" < Germanic *_gaura_- "mourn"

French _*gars*_, pronounced [gaR] "guy, man"; earlier meaning "boy, lad" < _garçon_ "boy" < Germanic (Frankish?) *_wrakkjo_- "vagrant, wanderer", cognate with English _wretch_, etc.

_*---

Arizona *_(US state) < Spanish _Arizonac _< O'odham _arizonak _"having a small spring" or possibly Basque _arizonak_ "good oaks"

_*arid zone*_ = "region with dry land" (Arizona is known for its deserts)


----------



## Red Arrow

Medune said:


> Portuguese and Japanese
> 
> Portuguese *né?*: a contraction of não é? (isn't it?, don't you think?)
> Japanese particle *ne*: ね (isn't it?, don't you think?)


In Dutch we can also say ''Nee?''. (It just means ''no'')
At the end of a sentence ''toch'' is more common, though.


----------



## masinerija

There's a lot of 'em in the bosnian language. Did you know that?


----------



## ancalimon

Turkish - English

getir : get (it) here
götür : get (it) there
getir : gather
getirir (getirir) : gatherer
git : , get to, go


Medune said:


> Portuguese and Japanese
> 
> Portuguese *né?*: a contraction of não é? (isn't it?, don't you think?)
> Japanese particle *ne*: ね (isn't it?, don't you think?)



In Turkish, "Ne?" means What?,  What is it?.


----------



## Nawaq

Gavril said:


> French _*gars*_, pronounced [gaR] "guy, man"; earlier meaning "boy, lad" < _garçon_ "boy" < Germanic (Frankish?) *_wrakkjo_- "vagrant, wanderer", cognate with English _wretch_, etc.


Just a little correction... _gars_ in French is pronounced "ga", no R.


----------



## Messquito

She is:
Irish: Tá sí. [ta ʃiː]
Chinese: 她是 [ta ʂi]

Boy:
English: boy
Japanese: 坊や　[bo:ya]


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## Gavril

Nawaq said:


> Just a little correction... _gars_ in French is pronounced "ga", no R.



I guess Icelandic _gaur_ and French _gars_ aren't really close enough to be on this thread, then.  (Unless Icelandic speakers sporadically drop the final -_r_.)


----------



## ancalimon

Here's something I found about a possible relation (or a series of coincidences) between the Greek word "Gaia" (earth) and Turkic "kaya" (rock, testicles)

First of all I would like to talk about cognates of the Turkic word and possible relations.

taş: stone
taşak: testicles

kay: to meld, to join together, to amalgamate, to unite, to become assimilated, to become very close with each other.

kayın: the sacred beech tree on which family trees were carved, kinship between families which is the result of two marriage.  (kayınana: motherinlaw, kayınbaba: fatherinlaw), tree of life which links the material world with the spiritual world.

Kayı: The boy (branch) of Oghuz tribe that founded Ottoman empire. It means power though marriage.

*Kạb- : 1 bark 2 shell 3 husk 4 bran
*Kab- : 1 to unite, bring together 2 be brought together
Kavra: comprehend, conceive, embrace, come together, assemble

Gaia in Greek culture is a personification of the Earth, She bore Uranus (Sky), Mountains, Pontus (Sea); Gaia in Scythian is Api, in Türkic Èbi "primogenitoress".(Türkic "apa" has a connotation "senior female relative" - Translator's Note)

Avestan
_gaiia_ 'life;'
_gaēθā_ '(material) world, totality of creatures'
_gaēθiia_ 'belonging to/residing in the worldly/material sphere, material'
_gairi_ 'mountain'

After seeing these coincidences (and the old accepted theory about Scythians speaking Turkic before the incidents leading to Scyhtians turning into Persians) here are my ideas.


The sperms want to get inside the egg. One of them merges with the egg.
This process is called "kaynaş" in Turkic. Two or more different things merge~combine together to form a new thing.
Just like little grains of sand and stones combine together to form a rock and Earth, a sperm and the egg combine together to form a human being and all the people as a commune.

So I can see a poetical coincidence between an egg, and Gaia and the all Turkic words related to kaya, kayın.


----------



## franknagy

ancalimon said:


> taşak: testicles


"Tasak" in Hungarian means a paper beg. So 
taşak[ Tr]: testicles -> tasak [Hu]-> zacskó [Hu]-> herezacskó  [Hu] = scrotum  is an obvious list.


----------



## ancalimon

Here's a mystical coincidence.

Greek "Orthodox" <> Turkish Orta Dokuz (Middle Nine)

The Turkic armies (army : ordu) used a tactic called the Turan tactic. The best soldiers and also the leader were gathered at the middle (orta). The middle part consisted of nine compartments.  So they were called the "orta dokuz" (the middle nine).

They attacked the enemy in a traditional "orthodox" way  ,but started to pull back encouraging the enemy. At the same time two wings of horsemen surrounded and ambushed the enemy. So while the attack started in an orthodox way, it ended up in an unorthodox way.

orthodox
ˈɔːθədɒks/
_adjective_
adjective: *orthodox*; adjective: *Orthodox*

*1*.
following or conforming to the traditional or generally accepted rules or beliefs of a religion, philosophy, or practice.
"Burke's views were orthodox in his time"
synonyms: conservative, traditional, observant, conformist, devout, strict, true, true blue, of the faith, of the true faith
"an orthodox Hindu"
(of a person) not independent-minded; conventional and unoriginal.
"a relatively orthodox artist"
synonyms: conventional, mainstream, conformist, accepted, approved, received, recognized, correct, proper, established, well established, authorized, authoritative, traditional, traditionalist, prevailing, prevalent, common, popular, customary, usual, normal, regular, standard, canonical, doctrinal, unheretical, conservative, unoriginal, derivative;
bien pensant
"his views were orthodox in his time"
antonyms: unconventional, unorthodox, nonconformist

*2*.
of the ordinary or usual type; normal.
"they avoided orthodox jazz venues"


----------



## ancalimon

English: is
Turkish ise

If he *is* xxx

Eğer o xxx *ise*.  :   Eğer o xxx*se*


----------



## Messquito

Examples where Chinese has similar word pairs that correspond to two different meanings of the same word in English:


Messquito said:


> 1. Swallow =  燕(yàn)(a bird) / swallow = 咽(yàn)(a verb)
> 2. bow = 弓(gong)(a tool) / bow = 躬(gong)(verb)


3. shoot = 射[ʂɤ] (as in shoot a bullet) / shoot = 攝[ʂɤ]影 (as in shoot a photo)
4. pupil ～ 童[tong](kid) / pupil = 瞳[tong](of the eye) (even more: in Malay, pupil of the eye is "anak mata (eye's kid)", in Greek κόρη means girl or pupil of the eye)


----------



## franknagy

Messquito said:


> 4. pupil ～ 童[tong](kid) / pupil = 瞳[tong](of the eye) (even more: in Malay, pupil of the eye is "anak mata (eye's kid)", in Greek κόρη means girl or pupil of the eye)



Hungarian:
pupilla = black of the eye from Latin.
There is a rarely used pure Hungarian traslation of "black of the eye": "szembogár"<-"eye+bug".


----------



## Messquito

I found this one watching Crayon Shinchan クレヨンしんちゃん：
Japanese: ラジャ！[rajya] = Roger! = Yes, sir!
Chinese: 了解 [ryaujye] = Understand = Yes, sir!

In the anime, when Shinchan is supposed to say ラジャ！, he says ブ．ラジャ(=bra), which is funny.
Taiwan translates it to 胸。照辦！，照辦＝Do as you say=Yes, sir! 胸罩(胸。照)=bra.


----------



## Messquito

Yes!
Cantonese: 係 [hai6] (=be-->yes, it is/I am...)
Japanese: はい [hai]


----------



## Thanderbolten

English - why
Korean - wae (why)

Sounds very much alike.


----------



## Encolpius

Have me mentioned? 

English: aye
Japanese: hai


----------



## Messquito

I'm not sure if this one is a coincidence, but it does seem like that  from the etymology
English: college (con-(together)+lege(to appoint))
Spanish collegio

vs

Arabic كُلِّيَّة (kulliyya) (from كُلّ kull (all, everything))


----------



## Gavril

English _rip_ < Germanic *_rupjan
_
Finnish_ repi- _"to tear", cognate with other Finnic words such as Estonian _rebida_ "to tear", and possibly also with North Sami _râppât_ "to open"; further origin unknown, possibly onomatopoeic


----------



## DaylightDelight

English: hole
Japanese: 掘る /horu/ = to dig


----------



## Messquito

I found one within a single language:
In Italian:
uscire (v.) exit (uscire [uʃ:ire] < Latin _exīre _(go out))
uscio (n.) exit (uscio [uʃ: o] < Latin_ ōstiu_ (door)) 
It is not entirely a coincidence, because _uscire_, predictably _escire_, changes _e_ to _u_ because of contamination from the semantically and morphologically similar _uscio_.


----------



## Messquito

費(fei4) fee
賠(pei2) to _pay_ for losses


----------



## Gavril

Old English _*gād*_ "point, spearhead, pointed stick" (the source of modern Eng. _goad_), from Germanic *_gaid_- "goad, spear"

Icelandic _gaddur_ (stem _*gadd*_-) "spike", from Germanic *_gazd_- "stick, rod", the source _of_ German _Gerte_ "switch, twig" and English _yard_, whose earlier meaning was "stick for measuring" (this applies to _yard_ in the sense of "3ft.";_ yard_ in the sense of "outdoor area behind a house, etc." has a different origin)


----------



## Sardokan1.0

German : *Jäger *(hunter)
Sardinian : *Jagaru *(hunting dog)
southern Corsican : *Ghjacaru*, *Jacaru* (dog)
Basque : *Zakur, Txakur *(hunting dog)


----------



## apmoy70

Eng. day < Proto-Germanic *dagaz < PIE *dʰegʷʰ- _to burn_ cf Lat. fovēre, _to keep warm, favour_
Ancient (Greek) Cretan δίᾱ díā (fem.), _day_ < PIE *die̯u- _heaven, daylight_ cf Skt. द्यु (dyu), _heaven_

Eng. care < Proto-Germanic *karōną < PIE *ǵeh₂r- ‎_to shout, call_ cf Lat. garrīre, _to chatter_
Ancient (Greek) Aeolic denominative v. καρέζω kărézō, _to be fond of, care_ < Aeolic name for heart κάρζᾱ kắrzā (fem.) < PIE *ḱē(r)d- _heart_ cf Lat. cor, _heart_

Εng. eye(s) < Proto-Germanic *augô < PIE *h₃okʷ-/*h₃ekʷ- _to see, eye_ cf Lat. oculus
Homeric Greek φάεα pʰắĕă (only neut. pl.), _eyes_ < PIE *bʰeh₂- _to shine_ cf Skt. भा (bhā), _light_

Fr. frapper, _to hit, strike_ < Proto-Germanic *hrapōną/*hrapjaną, _to touch, scratch_ < PIE *(s)krep-/*(s)kreb- _to scratch, engrave_ cf Eng. rap, _to seize, snatch_
Classical Greek ῥαπίζω rʰăpízō < *ϝραπίζω *wrăpízō, _to beat with stick, hand_ (possibly Pre-Greek)


----------



## franknagy

KalAlbè said:


> Haitian Creole : Bouda, and Brazilian Portuguese: Bunda.
> Both terms meaning "buttocks". A rather interesting coincidence indeed.


Hungaria "bunda" -> Port. "pele".


----------



## Dymn

apmoy70 said:


> Eng. care < Proto-Germanic *karōną < PIE *ǵeh₂r- ‎_to shout, call_ cf Lat. garrīre, _to chatter_
> Ancient (Greek) Aeolic denominative v. καρέζω kărézō, _to be fond of, care_ < Aeolic name for heart κάρζᾱ kắrzā (fem.) < PIE *ḱē(r)d- _heart_ cf Lat. cor, _heart_


And Latin _carus_, from PIE _*keh₂ro-, _although with a slightly different meaning. I had always thought _care _was a Latinate word.

Edit: It seems _*keh₂ro-_ is also the source of English _whore _


----------



## franknagy

Pele (Hun) = Muscardinus avellanarius . How do you say it in Portuguese?


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## Dymn

Latin _ago _/ˈaɡoː/ "I do, I make" (cf. _agent, action_)
Spanish _hago _/ˈaɣo/ "I do, I make", from Latin _facio _(cf. _fact_)


----------



## apmoy70

Eng. flower < Old Fr. flor < Lat. flōs < PIE *bʰleh₃- _to blossom_ cf Gr. φύλλον pʰúllŏn (neut.), _leaf, plant_
Classical Gr. masc. φλόος pʰlóŏs (uncontracted)/φλοῦς pʰloûs (contracted), _bloom of a plant_ < PIE *bʰleh₁- _to swell, flow_ cf Lat. fluere

Eng. lord < Old Eng. hlāfweard (hlāf, _loaf of bread_ + weard, _ward, keeper_).
Homeric Greek λάρς lárs/λᾱέρτης lāértēs (masc.), _lord of the house_, lit. _he who excites the people_ (also Odysseus' father's name) < Mycenaean syllabary e-ti-ra-wo interpreted as ἐρτίλαϝος ĕrtílawos, possibly related to the Homeric v. ἔρετο érĕtŏ, _to provoke, stir_ > Classical Gr. v. ἐρέθω ĕrétʰō, with obscure etymology.

Eng. v. to love < Proto-Germanic *lubojan < PIE *le̯ubʰ- _to love_ cf Lat. libēre.
Ancient (Greek) Doric v. λάω, _to wish, desire_ < *λάϝω *lắwō (with obscure etymology).

Lat. monēta, lit. _adviser_, an epithet of Juno (from which the Eng. word for money derives, as at the temple of Juno in Rome, money was coined) < PIE *men- _to think_ cf Lat. monēre.
Classical Greek epithet of Ἥρα Hḗrā (Juno for the Romans) μονίᾱ (Ἡραμονίᾱ Hērămŏníā), _Hera the changeless, steadfast_ < Classical Greek nominal μόνος mónŏs (masc.), -ίᾱ mŏníā (fem.), -ον mónŏn (neut.), _alone_ < *μόνϝος *mónwŏs < PIE *mon-u̯o-_alone_ cf Arm. մանր (manr), _small, thin_.

Disclaimer: I understand that the latter does not fit 100% the OP's requirements, but I think it's interesting that two ancient peoples used a similar (at least phonetically) epithet for the same goddess.


----------



## Red Arrow

This might not count, but...

English noun
Korean 는 "neun" (topic marker)


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## Messquito

French: néné (boobs)
Taiwanese Chinese: 奶奶(nene) (boobs)

French: zizi (penis (childish))
Chinese: 雞雞 (zhizhi) (penis (childish))


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## DaylightDelight

Aha!


Messquito said:


> French: zizi (penis (childish))
> Chinese: 雞雞 (zhizhi) (penis (childish))


Japanese: ちんちん (chinchin) (ditto)


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## franknagy

Hungarian: *zizi* means 
1) a candy sold plastic bags
2) somebody who a bit _mad_. "Zsuzsi egy kissé zizi" = "Susie is a bit mad."



Dymn said:


> Spanish _hago _


The Hungarian noun *hágó *means a mountain pass. EXample: Brenner-hágó.
The Hungarian present participle used for male animals fucking female ones. 
Example:_ "A fehér kancámat *hágó* fekete szamárcsődör." = The black donkey stallion *bulling* my white mare."_


----------



## Encolpius

Moro12 said:


> I am interested in the rare phenomenon of "word coincidence" in different languages.
> What I am specifically looking for is a situation when:
> 1. There are two different languages A and B.
> 2. The language A has a word M. And the language B has a word N.
> 3. The words M and N have identical or close meanings.
> 4. The words M and N are pronounced alike. (Not exactly the same, but still pretty "alike" to be recognizable).
> 5. M and N are not borrowed from the same source. (M is not borrowed from B; N is not borrowed from A; M and N are not borrowed from the same third language).
> 6. M and N are not derived from the same source due to genealogic affinity of A and B languages.
> 7. The languages A and B may be completely unrelated linguistically, or may still be allied - that does not matter if conditions 1 to 6 are met.



Here is the definition of what a word coincidence is. It has nothing to do with false friends.


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## Dymn

I know that Sanskrit has had a strong influence in the Indonesian area so it's likely not a coincidence but at least Wiktionary doesn't mention it in the etymology of _barat_:

Hindi (and _mutatis mutandis _other Indian languages): भारत _bhārat _"India"
Malay (and _mm _other Malayo-Polynesian languages): _barat _"west" (India is located to the west of these languages)


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## Messquito

Thai: เป็น (bpen) be
vs
English: been
Getman: bin


----------



## Sardokan1.0

*English *: hood
_*Sardinian *_: cuguddu -* from Latin *: cucullus

is the English "hood" related to Latin? The pronounce of "hood" is identical to the highlighted part of "cug*udd*u"


----------



## themadprogramer

Messquito said:


> Thai: เป็น (bpen) be
> vs
> English: been
> Getman: bin



I ain't no etymologist but if it's one of those words from Sanskrit or Pali it might as well be a cognate


----------



## themadprogramer

Messquito said:


> French: néné (boobs)
> Taiwanese Chinese: 奶奶(nene) (boobs)



Turkish: meme
Latin: mamma


----------



## Gavril

Welsh _pen_ ”head” < Celtic *_k__w__enno_- "head“

Mansi _päŋ_ “head“ < Finno-Ugric *_päŋe_ "head“


----------



## ilocas2

Greek: *κεφάλι (kefáli)* - head

Czech: *kebule* - head (pejoratively, expressively)

It's somewhat similar.


----------



## themadprogramer

Arabic قَفَاء (Pronounced like kafaa with a long A sound) and Turkish kafa


----------



## franknagy

mar = sea in Spanish
mar =in Hungarian  1. bits ( an acid ) 2. a part of the horses' back https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Withers.jpg/300px-Withers.jpg


----------



## Messquito

Japanese: 婆(baba) - grandma
vs
Russian: баба - grandma
Polish: baba - grandma


----------



## Gavril

Swedish _innan_ "before", originally a derivative of _i_ "in" and cognate with e.g. Icelandic _innan_ "from inside".

Finnish _ennen_ "before", from the stem *_ente-_, as seen in _ensin_ "first", _ennustaa_ "to predict, forecast", etc.

---

Finnish *_ente-_ "before, etc." (see above), cognate with e.g. Estonian _enne_ "before"

Latin _ante_ "before, in front of", related to Greek _antí_ "against", and probably further to Icelandic _enni_ "forehead" etc. (the original meaning having been ~"at the forehead of")


----------



## franknagy

Dymn said:


> I know that Sanskrit has had a strong influence in the Indonesian area so it's likely not a coincidence but at least Wiktionary doesn't mention it in the etymology of _barat_:
> 
> Hindi (and _mutatis mutandis _other Indian languages): भारत _bhārat _"India"
> Malay (and _mm _other Malayo-Polynesian languages): _barat _"west" (India is located to the west of these languages)


Barát in Hungarian:
1) monk
2) friend
Both meanings come from the  Slavic brat = brother.


Messquito said:


> Japanese: 婆(baba) - grandma
> vs
> Russian: баба - grandma
> Polish: baba - grandma


Hungarian: baba= Eng. baby.


----------



## ilocas2

English: *bubble* = Czech: *bublina*


----------



## Perseas

Messquito said:


> Japanese: 婆(baba) - grandma
> vs
> Russian: баба - grandma
> Polish: baba - grandma





franknagy said:


> Hungarian: baba= Eng. baby.



Greek: babá (nom. babás)= dad. 
μπαμπά(ς)


----------



## Messquito

English: pan- (e.g. pansexual) all
Chinese: 泛 (fan4) < Old Chinese: pʰɨɐmH
Korean: 범 ([pøm] < Old Chinese: pʰɨɐmH
Japanese: 汎（はん）(han) < Old Chinese: pʰɨɐmH


----------



## Dymn

English: _mad_
Italian: _matto _"mad"


----------



## franknagy

Within Hungarian:
*Matt* = 1. checkmate (<- Persian dead); 2. unvarnished (<-German).

_Baba_ in Hungarian can mean toy _puppe_t, too.


----------



## Gavril

In a different thread, Sardokan1.0 brought up an example that I think is worth including on this thread:

Old English _sprecan_ (stem _sprec_-) "speak"; from Germanic *_sprek_-, perhaps cognate with e.g. Lithuanian _spragėti_ "sizzle, crackle"

Sardinian _ispricare_ (stem _ispric_-) "action of talking, moving the mouth"; from Latin _explicare_ "unfold, explain" (Sardinian also has the variant _isplicare,_ which has not undergone the_ l>r_ shift)


----------



## Dymn

A thread in the EHL forum made me think of two words I had always thought that came from the same root:

Ancient Greek Ζεύς _Zeús_, Latin _Deus_ and many other IE branches, from PIE *_dyḗws _"sky, god"
Ancient Greek θεός _theós _"God"_, _from... well too complicated, from somewhere else


----------



## Messquito

January:
Hebrew: ינואר (yanuar)
Chinese: 元月(yuanyue)


----------



## ilocas2

Czech: *útok* = English: *attack*


----------



## Rearquhar

Does anyone know if there is any connection between Swedish gosse (a possible etymology being French gosse, eventually derived from PIE *ǵʰh₂éns *according to Wikitionary and having the sense of goose, hence foolish fellow) and Hiberno-English gossoon (from Old French through Irish), boy, lad? Wikitionary suggests that there is no connection, gossoon coming from garcon (apologies I do not have c-cedille on this keyboard) and from Frankish wrakjo (lacking circumflex on the o), servant.

Assuming this is correct, gosse and gossoon may well be an example of coincidence.


----------



## Dymn

German: _erlauben_
English: _allow _(I think in modern English the German cognate would have yield _*alieve _or _*aleave?_)


----------



## Encolpius

*Hungarian *picike (teeny-weeny)
*Estonia*: pisike (teeny-weeny)


----------



## Red Arrow

Are you sure that's a coincidence?


----------



## Messquito

media

vs
Chinese: 媒體(meti)


----------



## aum34

English *much = mucho/a *Spanish

*English Much:*

much (adj.) 


c. 1200, worn down by loss of unaccented last syllable from Middle English *muchel "large, much,"* from Old English micel "great in amount or extent," from Proto-Germanic **mekilaz*, from PIE root *meg- "great." As a noun and an adverb, from c. 1200. For vowel evolution, see bury.

Online Etymology Dictionary

*Spanish Mucho
*
_*From lat. Multus    -LT-  > -CH-  Mucho*_

_* Like:      Cultellus          >          Cuchillo (Knife)                           *_


----------



## Nino83

Sicilian *ccattà* and Japanese *katta* (I bought).
_gilatu *ccattà*_ = _jerāto *katta*_ (ジェラート買った) => I bought some ice cream
[ʤi'laːtu *kkat'ta*] = [ʥeraːto *katta*]
Sicilian: _ccattà_ < _accattài_ (I bought), verb _accattari < ad captare_ (Latin, through Norman _acatar_, see French _acheter_)
Japanese: _katta_ (bought) past form of _kau_ (to buy)


----------



## Dymn

German _kaufen, _Russian _купи́ть _(_kupit'_) vs. Japanese 買う (_kau_)


----------



## Gavril

English _shop_ (verb), pronounced [ʃɔp], from the noun _shop_ meaning ”store”, Germanic *_skopp_-.
Norwegian _kjøpe_ ”buy”, pronounced [ʃøpǝ], from Germanic *_kaup- _(cf. Icelandic _kaup_ ”trade”).


----------



## Messquito

English:
shun: to avoid
Chinese:
閃(shan): to dodge


----------



## Sardokan1.0

*English vs Sardinian*


*To Fall*
*Falare *= _to descend; from Latin "Devallare or Devalare" = to descend. Literally "to descend to valley"; The verb Falare in Sardinian it's used also as synonymous of "Rùere" = to Fall_

*Foreign*
*Fora 'e regnu* = _abroad; Contracted form of "Fora de Regnu" = out of kingdom_

*To Jump*
*Jumpare or Jampare* = _to cross a river, to cross a road, to jump the queue; The verb "to jump" in Sardinian it's usually translated as "Brincare"_

*To Achieve*
*Acchipire *= _same meaning of English; Pronounce "Akkip*i*re" (the bold marks the accent)_

*Bump*
*Tumbu, Tzumbu* = _same meaning; The verb "to bump" translates as "Attumbare or Atzumbare"; If we try to guess the origin from Latin, it should be something like "Ad Tumbare", from Tumba = Tomb (in Sardinian "Tumba"); meant as mound / elevation on a flat surface; and what is a bump? It's a mound, an elevation on a flat surface._

*To Trample*
*Trampistare *= _same meaning; From Latin "Intra(m) + Pistare" : Intra = within, between (the feet); Pistare = to tread on; The verb it's also a synonymous of Trampare = To trick, to swindle; From "Trampa" = trick_

*Scam*
*Iscampullitta *= _same meaning; From the Sardinian "iscàmpulu" = scrap, remains, worthless thing_

*Pool, Puddle*

*Paùle *= _swamp; From late Latin "Padus-Padulis" = swamp; Accusative : padulem -> padule -> paùle_

*Flurry *= _whirl_
*Furriare *= _throw away something making it whirl in the air; Furriare it's also a synonymous of "to turn"_


----------



## Gavril

Sardokan1.0 said:


> *English vs Sardinian*
> 
> 
> *Foreign*
> *Fora 'e regnu* = _abroad; Contracted form of "Fora de Regnu" = out of kingdom_


It seems likely that _fora_ and the first syllable of Eng. _foreign_ are of the same origin (_foreign_ < Latin_ foraneus_ "on the outside, exterior" < Lat. _foris_ "door"; cf. Spanish _fuera_ "outside (of)", etc.).



> *Acchipire *= _same meaning of English; Pronounce "Akkip_*i*_re" (the bold marks the accent)_


Good one, except that the aC- part is probably of the same origin in both (Eng. _achieve_ < Latin _*ad*_- "to" + _cap_- "head", whereas _acchipire_ seems to be from Lat. _accipere_ "receive, accept (etc.)", from _*ad*_- + _capere_ "to take").


----------



## ilocas2

Croatian: *gavran* - raven
(Czech: *havran* - rook)

Breton: *marc'hvran* - raven


----------



## Dymn

"bump, bulge":

Spanish: _bulto_
Dutch: _bult_


----------



## Sardokan1.0

*English *vs *Sardinian*

_*- Crisp *(crunchy) - *Crispu *(biting, thorny, crackling) 
_
Examples : 
_Su frittu est crispu - The cold is biting
Su rùu est crispu - The blackberry bush is thorny
Su fogu est crispu - The fire is crackling_
_
*- To Crack* - *Craccare *(to tread on)_; Derived from the Sardinian noun "Craccas" (heavy shoes) - from Latin "Caligas" ; after two millennia of evolution the noun changed from Caligas -> Calgas -> Cargas - Cragas -> Craccas.
_
*- The Trots *(slang form for  diarrhoea) - *Troddiare *(to fart)_
_
*- Mucky* (dirty) - *Mucconosu *(snotty) - derived from Muccu (Latin "Muccus")

*- Muck *(organic trash) *Mugore *(mould) - from Latin "Mucor-Mucoris" (mould) Accusative "Mucorem" -> Mucore -> Mugore_
*
- Muzzle*_ (animal snout) *Muzzighile *(snout, face); the same word is present also in Corsican language as "Muccighile"

_


----------



## franknagy

Portuguese: nu = naked.
German: Nu = very short time < 1 second.


----------



## citrustree

I'm not sure if this one has already been mentioned by an earlier post but I think it is really a coincidence.

To "owe" (English verb) and "負う" (Japanese verb pronounced (almost) the same as English "owe") share the same (or a very similar) meaning, too.


----------



## Dymn

franknagy said:


> Portuguese: nu = naked.
> German: Nu = very short time < 1 second.


I think you haven't understood the topic of the thread.


----------



## Messquito

franknagy said:


> Portuguese: nu = naked.
> German: Nu = very short time < 1 second.


False cognates that is!
This thread is where your replies should go.


----------



## Dymn

Actually "false cognates" are two words which have similar appearance and meaning and people may think of them as cognates. The topic is basically the same as this thread, just with the difference that this also includes remote coincidences (like between Spanish and Japanese) that nobody would ever mistake as cognates.

As for what Franknagy is doing, I would class them as "false friends", similar appearance and different meaning. Although they are really really far-fetched, to be honest.


----------



## Messquito

English:
Sure! Sure! (=Yeah, right.) -sarcasm-
[ʃɔ:ʃɔ:] (British)
Chinese:
是喔！是喔！(lit. Right, right.=Yeah, right.) -sarcasm-
[ʂɔ:ʂɔ:]


----------



## Nino83

As it has been said in #357 for Portuguese: _ne_ (Romance languages) and ね (Japanese), both expressing a tag question, meaning "isn't it? isn't it right? isn't it so?).
Piedmontese, Lombard: written _nè, n'è_ or _neh_, contraction of _non è_ (not is), Latin _non est_.
Portuguese: written _né_, contraction of _não é_ (not is), Latin _non est_.
See also the French expression _n'est-ce pas_ (with a mandatory subject pronoun, _ce_, and a double negation adverb, _pas_) or the Italian _nevvero_, contraction of _non è vero_ (not is true).

_It's good, isn't it?
Bun, *nè*_? (Piedmontese)
_Bom, *né*? _(Portuguese)
美味しい、（です）*ね*？ (Japanese)
_C'est bon, *n'est*-ce pas?_ (French)
_Buono, *ne*vvero?_ (Italian)


----------



## Messquito

Hokkien: 燒 [ɕjɔ]
French: chaud [ʃo]
Means hot.


----------



## citrustree

Arabic: second person masculine pronoun "anta" (أنت)
Japanese: second person pronoun "anta" 

The Arabic "anta" is a standard word whereas the Japanese "anta" sounds casual, but they are both second person pronouns.


----------



## Gavril

Old English _sceoppa_ "booth", German _Schuppen_ "shed", from Germanic *_*skopp-/skupp-*_

Finnish _*koppi*_ "booth, cubicle, shed (etc.)", apparently a derivative of _koppa_ "hollow, basket (etc.)"

(the initial _s-_ of the Germanic word would be expected to drop out in Finnish, as it has in e.g. _kaappi_ "cabinet, closet", from the same source as e.g. Norwegian _skap_ "cabinet")

I'm not sure that F. _koppi_ / Gmc. *_skopp- _is a pure coinidence: there may at least have been some semantic contamination between the two.

By the way:



Sardokan1.0 said:


> *English *vs *Sardinian*
> 
> _*- Crisp *(crunchy) - *Crispu *(biting, thorny, crackling) _
> 
> [...]
> 
> _*- Muzzle* (animal snout) *Muzzighile *(snout, face); the same word is present also in Corsican language as "Muccighile"_



I don't know the etymology of these Sardinian words, but I really wonder if they have no connection to the corresponding English words.

English _crisp_ is from Latin _crispus_ "curled", and _muzzle_ is apparently from Medieval Latin _mūsum_ "snout", via French. Both Latin words look like very good candidates for being the originals of the Sardinian words above.


----------



## Messquito

Japanese:
そう[sɔ:]　"Is that right./OK."
Chinese:
是喔[sɔ:]   "Is that right./OK." (Southern & Taiwanese accents)


----------



## Sardokan1.0

Gavril said:


> I don't know the etymology of these Sardinian words, but I really wonder if they have no connection to the corresponding English words.
> 
> English _crisp_ is from Latin _crispus_ "curled", and _muzzle_ is apparently from Medieval Latin _mūsum_ "snout", via French. Both Latin words look like very good candidates for being the originals of the Sardinian words above.



More than from French which never had contacts with Sardinian language they could be derived directly from Latin, in a case of convergent evolution; the "LE" ending makes them sound like adjectives derived from Musum

musum -> adjective : musilis (musilem) -> hypothetical further adjective: musicilis (musicilem) -> pronounced in the Classical way : musikilem -> musikile -> musighile -> mutzighile (actual Sardinian pronounce)

other similar examples from Sardinian language :

_murru (snout) -> murrighile (snout)_
_fogu (fire) -> foghile (fireplace)_
_janna (door) -> jannile (threshold)_
_(b)acca (cow) -> (b)acchìle (cow shed)_

Many surprising cases of convergent evolution are present between Romanian and northern Sardinian (Logudorese), there are many words and evolutive solutions present only in these two Romance languages



Spoiler:  Romanian - Sardinian (Logudorese)



_Limba - Limba (language, tongue)_
_Apa - Abba (water)_
_Iapa - Ebba (female horse)_
_Acum - Como (now)_
_A Fura - Furare, A Furare (to steal)_
_Cucuveaua - Cuccumiàu* (owl) *I think that the origin is onomatopoeic, because the bird's verse sounds like Cuccumiàu Cuccumiàu!_



etc.etc.


----------



## Dymn

Arabic زَيْت _zayt _"oil"
Portuguese _azeite_
Galician _aceite_
Spanish _aceite_


Latin _acetum _"vinegar" (from _acere_ "to be sour", from the same PIE source as _acute_)
Italian _aceto_
German _Essig_
Polish _ocet_
etc.



English _sock_ and German _Socke, _all other Germanic languages, as well as Finnish, Estonian and Latvian (from Latin _soccus _"slipper").
Russian носок _nosok_ "sock" (from носить _nosit'_ "to wear" + -ок _-ok_ (diminutive))

English _lake_, German _Lache _"pool, puddle"
Latin _lacus _(Pt, Sp & It _lago_, Cat _llac_, Fr _lac_), Scottish Gaelic _loch_


----------



## Hercules Grytpype-Thynne

The word for "dog" in Mbabaram (an Australian aboriginal language) is "dog".  (Wikipedia)


Dymn said:


> A thread in the EHL forum made me think of two words I had always thought that came from the same root:
> 
> Ancient Greek Ζεύς _Zeús_, Latin _Deus_ and many other IE branches, from PIE *_dyḗws _"sky, god"
> Ancient Greek θεός _theós _"God"_, _from... well too complicated, from somewhere else


There's also Nahuatl _teotl _(root _teo-_), also "god" but unrelated to either.

Sumerian _sipad _= English _shepherd_.

Basque _ni -- _first-person singular absolutive pronoun ("me"; "I" with intransitive verbs)
Swahili _ni-_ -- first-person singular verb prefix

French _aucun(e) _-- no (adj.), none
Swahili _hakuna_ -- there is no ...

(I knew of the Disney song _Hakuna matata _long before I learned any Swahili, and had originally guessed - quite wrongly, as it turns out - that _hakuna _might be a borrowing of French _aucune._)

Akkadian _gerru_ "military campaign, expeditionary force" (a secondary meaning of a noun whose primary meaning is "road, path")
French _guerre_ "war"

Akkadian _in(a), _"in" (usually _ina_, but sometimes _in _in literary use, which may indicate an archaic form)
Latin _in_, English _in_, etc.

Akkadian _līpu_, "fat"
Greek λῐ́πος (_lípos_, "fat")

Akkadian _šī_, "she, that (f.)"
English _she_

Akkadian _ugāru_, "meadow, field"
Latin _ager_ "field", English _acre
_
Akkadian _ūsu_, "direction, guidance, custom"
Latin _ūsus_, "use, habit, usage, custom"

Of course for some of these there's always the possibility, however remote, of a very early borrowing.  I don't know the Akkadian etymologies.

The root of the verb "to be" in Manchu is *bi* (pronounced /bi/).  The root by itself is used as a copula ("is"/"are"), and Manchu verb roots can also be used as imperatives.

The Etruscan word for "god" was _ais_, plural _aisar_. 
The Old Norse word for "god" was _áss_, plural _æsir.
_
The informal English expression _oh-so_ means "very".
The Basque word _oso_ means "very".


----------



## Kotlas

In a number of Slavic languages, "rana" means _a_ _wound_ while in some Romance languages (Italian, Spanish), "rana" is _a frog._

Compare the German noun _Gift_ (poison) and the English _gift_ (a present, a special ability, natural talent) and also the Dutch _gift_ (act of giving).


----------



## Gavril

Celtic **kagio-* is commonly reconstructed as meaning "enclosure" (its reflexes include Welsh _cae_ "hedge, field, enclosure", Breton _quae_ "hedge, enclosure", etc.)

Eng. *cage* < _French cage_ < Latin _cavea_ "hollow"

---

- English *from *

- Swedish writing sometimes has the abbreviation *fr o m* (_från och med_) = "from, starting at (a point in time)".

This is not a pure coincidence, because the _fr-_ part of the Swedish phrase (= _från_) is cognate with the _fr-_ of English _from_; however, the _o m_ in the Swedish phrase is unrelated to the corresponding part of _from_.


----------



## Stoggler

Kotlas said:


> Compare the German noun _Gift_ (poison) and the English _gift_ (a present, a special ability, natural talent) and also the Dutch _gift_ (act of giving).



In Swedish (and I think Norwegian too) _*gift*_ means both married and poison.


----------



## Ghabi

Kotlas said:


> In a number of Slavic languages, "rana" means _a_ _wound_ while in some Romance languages (Italian, Spanish), "rana" is _a frog._


This is not what this thread is about. It must be the most misunderstood thread of the forum.


----------



## ilocas2

English: opposite = Czech: opak


----------



## Romanian Eagle

English: Cost (a little high pitched all around the word)
Romanian: Cost (lower pitched, o is longer, and c,s and t are pronounced with an extra letter backing them up, a low pitched "a" with the tone being warm)


----------



## Gavril

German _*Weiche *_(pronounced [vaiçə]) "switch / points" (on a railway), possibly from _weichen _"to yield"

Finnish _*vaihde *_(pronounced [vaiçde]), same meaning, from the verb _vaihtaa _"switch, exchange", with many Finno-Permic cognates (e.g. Estonian _vahetada_ "to exchange")


----------



## apmoy70

Classical Greek *πόσις pósis* (masc.), _lord of the house, husband, consort_ (PIE *poti- _lord of the house_ cf Skt. पति (pati), _ruler_)
English *boss* < Dutch baas, _master_ (of obscure origin).

Classical Greek adj. *μινύθες mĭnútʰĕs* (neut.), _(adj.) minute, chopped small_, which as a nominalized adj. described the small wooden or clay tablet with the food list during official parties (PIE *mi-n(e)-u- _to lessen, diminish_ cf Lat. minuere, _to diminish_)
English/French *menu* < Latin minutus < Latin v. minuere (couldn't establish if the two developed independently from each other i.e. whether the French knew of the pre-existing Greek word, or not). 

Classical Greek *ἀμείβω ăme̯íbō*, _to pass, cross, enter, dislodge_ (of unknown etymology)
English *move* < Latin movēre (PIE *meu̯e- _to move, drive_ cf Skt. मीवति (mīvati), _to move, push_)


----------



## Messquito

English:
can(container), cognate with German Kanne, Dutch kan...
Japanese:
罐（かん）, cognate with Chinese罐(guan), Korean 관(gwan)...


----------



## Dymn

This one is within English itself: _coward _and _cower _("to crouch in fear", a word I've just discovered right now).


----------



## Hercules Grytpype-Thynne

Not to mention _cow_, "to intimidate".

The cowed coward cowered.


----------



## Dymn

Portuguese _perna _and Spanish _pierna _(both "leg"): 
from Latin _perna _("[pork] thigh")

Romanian _pernă _"cushion, pillow":
from Serbian _perina _"pillow", from _perje _"feathers"

The meaning is not the same but a connection could be possible, in a similar fashion as _cushion _which is related to "thigh".


----------



## Sardokan1.0

Italian : _Capitale _(Capital city)
Sardinian : _Capidale, Cabidale_ (cushion, pillow)

From Latin "Capitalis", adjective derived from "Caput-Capitis" (head)


----------



## Olaszinhok

Italian:
(il) *fine* (masculine) aim, purpose
(la)* fine* (feminine) end


----------



## Dymn

Sardokan1.0 said:


> Italian : _Capitale _(Capital city)
> Sardinian : _Capidale, Cabidale_ (cushion, pillow)
> 
> From Latin "Capitalis", adjective derived from "Caput-Capitis" (head)





Olaszinhok said:


> Italian:
> (il) *fine* (masculine) aim, purpose
> (la)* fine* (feminine) end


This is not the topic of the thread


----------



## Hercules Grytpype-Thynne

A fine reply. Capital, one might almost say.


----------



## CrazyCat851732

Spanish: ir
Quechua: riy
Both mean “to go” (verb), and the Quechua word is pronounced exactly like the Spanish word backwards (complete with the alveolar “r”).

Spanish: mal (adverb meaning “bad” or “badly”); malo (adjective meaning “bad”)
Yucatec Maya: maʼalob (adverb meaning “well”)
The Mayan word is pronounced like Spanish “malo” except with a brief glottal stop in the middle of 2 “a”’s (“mA-alo” [stress on first “a”; stress on “a” also in Spanish])

Mandarin Chinese: 三 (The number 3. Pronounced “san” with the “a” sounding like the “o” in the English word “song.”)
Japanese: 三 (The number 3, pronounced exactly the same as in Chinese.)
This is a very strange case because while the written character in Japanese was copied from Chinese simply because Chinese characters were adopted into written Japanese via scrolls traded from China developing into Kanji characters in Japanese, the pronounced word itself for the number 3 was never copied from China.

Spanish: “Casa” (house)
Nahuatl: “Calli” (house)
It’s just striking that both start with “ca” pronounced identically

Spanish: “así” (Derived from Latin “sic”)
(Modern) Greek:
έτσι

Spanish: “Goma”
Japanese:” ゴム “ (pronounced “gomu,” as if just like the Spanish word with “u” vowel sound instead of “a”)
Both mean “rubber” and also “eraser.”


----------



## Nino83

CrazyCat851732 said:


> the pronounced word itself for the number 3 was never copied from China.


Are you sure? 
The native Japanese word for number three is _mittsu_.


----------



## apmoy70

CrazyCat851732 said:


> Spanish: “así” (Derived from Latin “sic”)
> (Modern) Greek:
> έτσι


Actually they're probably related, the MoGr adv. «έτσι» [ˈeʦ͡i] --> like this/that, thus is the result of contamination of the Byzantine Greek adverb «οὑτωσί» outōsí --> in this way or manner, so, thus < Classical emphatic adverb «οὑτωσῑ́» houtōsí, with the Latin conj. etsī --> even if, yet.


----------



## CrazyCat851732

My mistake regarding the Chinese and Japanese number 3 and the Spanish and Greek “like this/that, thus.” Also upon a bit more research it’s probable that “gomu” and “goma” are related because “goma” is also Portuguese for rubber and the Japanese word is written in katakana, indicating it is a loanword.

The Spanish coincidences with the indigenous-Latin-American words from Nahuatl, Mayan, and Quechua still stand and are remarkable, however. The phonemic coincidences between them and Spanish add to that by the way and are also striking. Even if they translate to the very specific opposite, which is even stranger in a sense, except for the Quechua example, which is the exact same meaning with the word backwards.

Another similar case I found to the Spanish and Quechua "to go" verb is that the Spanish articles meaning "the" -- "el " and "la" (respectively masculine and feminine, irrelevant to Mayan grammar) -- translate to "le " (pronounced like "el " backwards) in Yucatec Maya.

Then there's Spanish "tu " meaning "your " in the informal tense and "su " as the formal tense form corresponding (another switched-like case) to (Modern) Greek "σου " and "του " respectively.

Back to Quechua, "Mama " means "mother " and "mom" and also used as a prefix as in "Mama Ocllo," once queen of the Incan Empire (first name Ocllo) -- much like in Spanish and Italian.

And here's a very interesting one: Regarding the city of Malibu in Los Angeles County (and the coconut rum named after said city) in California, Malibu is an adaptation of the original place name "Humaliwu" given to it by the original Chumash tribe whose linguistic group spanned from Ventura southward to Malibu, and "Humaliwu" means "where the surf sounds loudly"; the Hawaiian word "Maliu" means "to listen, to hear, to turn towards, to heed" (pronounced the same as "Malibu" (and the 2nd through 4th syllables of "Humaliwu") obviously omitting the penultimate consonant, and the "i " pronounced like the "i " in "Maui"). Pure coincidence.


----------



## ManOfWords

Jabir said:


> edit: I don't know if English "door" and "star" have same origin that Persian "dar" and "setare"...


eSTRela in Portuguese (Brasil)


----------



## Hercules Grytpype-Thynne

Also ultimately from same Proto-Indo-European root as English _star_, Persian _setare _(Greek _aster_, Welsh _seren_, Hittite _astiras_, etc.)


----------



## Messquito

Chinese yes-no questions:
...嗎[ma]/麼[mɤ] (normal way)
...咪[mi] (cute way)
Turkish yes-no questions:
...mı[mɤ]
...mi[mɪ]


----------



## franknagy

Sardokan1.0 said:


> Italian : _Capitale _(Capital city)
> Sardinian : _Capidale, Cabidale_ (cushion, pillow)
> 
> From Latin "Capitalis", adjective derived from "Caput-Capitis" (head)



The word "kapitális" means in Hungarian "very big" (buck-horn, balloney).


----------



## ilocas2

Spanish: *pato* - duck
Serbocroatian: *patka* - duck


----------



## Gavril

Finnish _*pudota*_ "fall"
Slovene _*padati*_ "fall", possibly from the same source as Latin _pessum_ "to the ground/bottom"

(I haven't been able to find the etymology of _pudota_, so it's not impossible these are related, but the vowels don't match very well.)

Estonian _*luge*-_ "read", cognate with e.g. Finn. _lukea_ "read"
Latin _*lege*-_ "read"


----------



## kaverison

When I come across words sounding similar in other languages, I always wondered if they had connections before. Some of these are strikingly similar:


Tamil - Nii = You
Chinese - Nii = You

Tamil - Niiviir, Niingal = You (plural, respect)
Chinese - Niimen = You (plural)

Tamil - kaN - கண் = eye
          käN - காண்  = see, look

Chinese - 
         kan yi kan = to have a look


Tamil - 
          Ammaa = Mother
          Appaa = Father
Korean -  
          eomma = Mother
          abba = Father


Tamil - Naan (sing) = I
Korean - Na

Tamil - Nii = You
Korean - Neo = You

Tamil - inga = (near) here
Korean - yeogi, igot

Tamil - pul = grass
Korean - pul


Tamil - konjam = few, little
Korean - jogeum 


Tamil - tholai - தொலை = distant
English, Greek - Tele


----------



## Messquito

English:
dung
Korean:
똥(ttong)


----------



## Encolpius

English - rot
Hungarian - rothad (to rot)


----------



## Gavril

English _*quote*_ ”something said by someone” < the verb _quote_ ”to report something said/written” < Latin _quotare_ ”to number chapters (in a book, etc.)” < _quot_ “how many?”

English _*quoth* _”said” < Old English _cweðan_ “say”, cognate with Icelandic _kveða_ “say”, etc., and perhaps further with Armenian կոչել, կոչ- (_kočel, koč-_) “to name, call”.

Latin _in*quit*_ “said” (where _in_- is a prefix) < the same root as _inseque_ “tell!”, which has been linked to English _say_, German _sagen_, etc.

---------------------------------------------

_*herd*_ "flock of cattle or other animals", thought to be cognate with Slovenian _čreda_ "herd", Greek _kórthus_ "heap", etc.

_*horde*_ "large group of people", potentially also "moving pack of animals"
< Turkic _orda_ / _ordu_ "encampment" (later > "army" > "group of people" by metonymy)

----------------------------------------------

Yakut-Sakha _*tıla*_ "language"

Dutch _*taal*_ "language"


----------



## Yendred

Having taken Russian lessons when I was in high school, I always remember the peculiar euphony between the Russian expression "да так" and the French expression "_D'attaque_" (= ready to go / in good shape).
The meaning of "да так" is not so clear for me (please help me, Russian participants ) but I think it means something like "almost / not bad".


----------



## Encolpius

Czech - ale [but]
Modern Greek - αλλά [but]


----------



## Gavril

Encolpius said:


> Czech - ale [but]
> Modern Greek - αλλά [but]



That's interesting. I always guessed that these terms were related, but now that I think about it, maybe not.

Do you happen to know the etymology of Cz. _ale_? (I did a little looking, but so far I haven't found anything.)


----------



## Encolpius

My book says: a- + -le


----------



## Awwal12

Same in Russian (although chiefly dialectal): ali, ale (from "li" and "le" respectively, but with the same meaning).


----------



## AndrasBP

Latvian and Lithuanian *bet* = English *but*


----------



## Encolpius

Hungarian kutya - dog
Hindi kutta - dog

Hungarian: kupak - lid (uncertain origin )
Turkish & other languages: kapak -lid


----------



## Encolpius

English: bullock
Hungarian: tulok [bullock]


----------



## AndrasBP

Finnish/Estonian: *jää* /jæ:/ - ice
Welsh: *iâ* /ja:/ - ice


----------



## Messquito

English: cum, as in study-cum-bedroom
Hokkien: 兼(kiam), as in 書房兼臥室


----------



## AndrasBP

English: *two* /tu:/
Ainu (indigenous language of Hokkaido, North Japan): *tu*


----------



## Encolpius

Persian ki (who)
Hungarian ki (who)

Hungarian possessive suffix -m (e.g: my father - apá*m*)
Turkish possessive suffix - m (baba*m* - my father)

English: bad
Persian: bad (i.e. bad)


----------



## Gavril

Finnish _*kaiva*_- “to dig” (infinitive: _kaivaa_)
Latin _*cava*_-“to hollow out” (inf.: _cavāre_), the source of Spanish _cavar_ “to dig”, English _ex*cav*ate_, etc.

-------------------

Scandinavian _*piske*_/_*piska*_ "whip" (noun)

Finnish _*piekse*_- (infinitive _piestä_) "to beat, whip"



(Finnish _piiska_ "whip" (noun) is cognate with the first of these.)


----------



## nimak

*Macedonian* куче [kut͡ʃɛ] - _dog_
*Hungarian* kutya [kucɒ] - _dog_


----------



## Red Arrow

*Estonian -ke* [ke] = diminutive ending
*Belgian Dutch -ke *[kə] = diminutive ending


----------



## AndrasBP

*Basque *plural suffix *-k
Hungarian *plural suffix *-k*

*.*

English nationality adjective suffix of Arabic/Indo-Iranian origin *-i* (Iraqi, Yemeni, Nepali, Bangladeshi, etc.)
Hungarian "place of origin" adjectival suffix *-i* (iraki, jemeni, nepáli, bangladesi, but also kanadai, perui, madridi, berlini, etc.)


----------



## Encolpius

Vietnamese *cặc *- cock, dick, penis
US Englich *cock  *- penis, dick


----------



## AndrasBP

Hungarian: *lyuk* (pron. /juk/, in archaic dialects /ʎuk/) - *hole *(an old word of Finno-Ugric origin)
Russian: *люк* [lʲuk] - *manhole, hatch* (from German *Lücke *- gap, hole)


----------



## Gavril

1.

Partial coincidence:

English _*merganser*_ "a type of duck" < Latin _merg-_ "dive" + _anser_ "goose"

German _*Meergänse*_ "a type of duck/goose" < _Meer_ "lake, sea" + _Gans_ "goose"

_gans_ and _anser_ are cognate, but the syllables _mer-/meer-_ are unrelated to each other.


--------------------------------------------------------

2.

_*circle*_ is pronounced roughly like *[soj.kl]* in some English accents (e.g. parts of the northeastern US, if I'm not mistaken)

This pronunciation is rather close to the standard pronunciation of _*cycle*_, i.e. _*[saj.kl]*_. Like _circle_, the word _cycle _can refer to a cyclical movement (though the most frequent meaning of _circle_ is probably not a movement, but a static cyclical shape).

_circle_ is from Latin _circulus_ < Greek _kríkos_, plus the Latin diminutive suffix _-ulu-_, whereas _cycle_ is from Greek _kúklos_ < *_kwekwlo-_, a reduplicated form of *_kwel-_ "to turn" (as seen in e.g. Latin _colere_ "to cultivate").


----------



## Stoggler

Encolpius said:


> US Englich *cock *- penis, dick



  There’s nothing uniquely American about that word.  It’s in wide usage in British English for starters.


----------



## Encolpius

Stoggler said:


> There’s nothing uniquely American about that word.  It’s in wide usage in British English for starters.



It is. The pronunciation. Only the US English sounds close to the Vietnamese one.


----------



## Encolpius

*Vietnamese*: chút - a little bit
*Russian *чуть - a little bit


----------



## Vukabular

Serbian: *čeljad* /tʃêʎad/  << Proto Slavic: **čeľadь* << ??? - "child"
English: *child* /t͡ʃaɪld/ << Old English *ċild* /t͡ʃild/ << ???


----------



## Armas

Finnish: _peri_-, intensive prefix, e.g. _perikato_ "utter destruction", _perivihollinen_ "archenemy"
Greek: _περι_- (_peri_-), intensive prefix, e.g. _περιζήτητος_ "much requested", _περίφημος_ "very famous"

Finnish: -_ma_, suffix that forms action/result nouns from verbs
Greek: -_μα_ (-_ma_), suffix that forms action/result nouns from verbs

Finnish: _liian_ "too (much)"
Greek: _λίαν_ (_lian_) "very much"


----------



## AndrasBP

The Latvian interjection "*lūk*" /lu:k/ means "*look!*" or "there it is!"


----------



## Arme

I have a whole big list of such words:
A few of them:

In Armenian: "blblal" /բլբլալ/ - "talk fast and ununderstandably, silly things"
In English: "blah-blah-blah" has identical meaning and form

In Armenian: "nan, nani" /նանի/ - "mother, grandmother" (informal usage)
In English: "nanna" - "grandmother" (informal usage)

In Armenian (Artsakh dialect): "who(v), whom" /հու(վ), հում/ - "who, whom"
In English: "who, whom"

In an Armenian dialect: "hush ketsir"/հաշ կեցիր/ - "stay silent" 
In English: "hush" - same meaning

In Armenian: "bumpel" /բամփել/ - "to bump, hit with hand"
In English: "to bump" - similar meaning


----------



## Arme

The definite article in old Armenian (Grabar) is "z" (զ), and like "the" in English it is put at the beginning of the noun  (unlike in modern Armenian).

The funny thing is that when some Armenians and Russians have difficulty in pronouncing the English "the" article, they say "z" instead of it as "z book", and it sounds similar to old Armenian in that regard )


----------



## clamor

Arme said:


> The definite article in old Armenian (Grabar) is "z" (զ), and like "the" in English it is put at the beginning of the noun  (unlike in modern Armenian).


Hello  Is it the definite article or the accusative singular mark?


----------



## Arme

clamor said:


> Hello  Is it the definite article or the accusative singular mark?


Hi Clamor, yes, it IS an accusative mark, and one of its meanings as an accusative mark is "definiteness", which today is expressed by modern Armenian definite article «ը» /"the" in English/.
For instance: օրհնեցԷք *զ*ՏԷր-օրհնեցեք Տիրոջ*ը*
օրհնեցԷք *զ*անուն Տեառն-օրհնեցեք Տիրոջ անուն*ը */Bless *the* name of the Lord/

The French linguist Antoine Meillet and others too talked about its "function expressing definiteness" which can be found in the earliest Armenian texts: they believe that it is an early function of «զ» before it became grammaticized as just an accusative mark.


----------



## clamor

Thank you, very interesting! I hardly ever understood the articles in Grabar, it is so strange xD


----------



## Encolpius

English: kid (young goat)
Hungarian: gida (young goat)


----------



## themadprogramer

Uh... here's one I found recently:

Arabic انت ('anta)
Japanese 貴方 (anata)

Both of which mean _you_


----------



## Encolpius

rayloom said:


> Like Arabic _anta_ "you" and Japanese _anata/anta_ which also means "you". The 2 words are similar in meaning and pronunciation, but have different origins.


----------



## themadprogramer

I'd say I can't believe someone beat me to it but this thread has been going on for how many years now?


----------



## Encolpius

English: too
Hungarian: túl


----------



## Olaszinhok

Encolpius said:


> English: too
> Hungarian: túl


I can't see a word coincidence in your example? It is probably due to the heat! There are 40° here.
 Both words mean _too_ but they are pronounced differently. Aren't they?


----------



## ancalimon

There are literally tens of thousands of words between English and Turkish that look like anagrams. And it looks like (I am not saying that there is since I haven't tried finding any correlations) there is some kind of Caesar Cipher algorithm revolving around shifting letters by +-1 or 2 or 3 or changing letters between for example
y<>a ı q<>k, p k<>q c g<>c k o<>2*ü
w<>ğ,u. B <> 2*p, q etc.

Here is an example

Turkish
Kaydır
English
Drag

Turkish
Sürükle
English
Scroll

Turkish
Sıkı ez
English
Squeeze

Turkish
Sorgu from Turkic Soqra meaning to try the reach true knowledge (without force).
English
Query

Turkish
Uygulat
English
Execute

Turkish
Bağla (Baqla)
English
Apply

The list can can go on and on

I guess if the story about tower of babel is actually real in a sense and not a telltale, this could be it


----------



## mannoushka

(1)
Suffix ‘y’, pronounced like a short ‘i’, to indicate relatedness.
Examples:
English (adj.): oily, fishy, smelly, mossy, ratty, bitchy, cocky.
Persian (adj.): gelli (muddy), iraani (of Iran), honari (artistic), aabaki (watery, dilute), sheeri (milky), tanni (in offspring, of same parentage), shahri (urban).

(2)
English: fuzz
Persian: vezz

(3)
English: dark
Persian: taareek

(4)
English: puff
Persian: poff


----------



## Włoskipolak 72

themadprogramer said:


> Uh... here's one I found recently:
> 
> Arabic انت ('anta)
> Japanese 貴方 (anata)
> 
> Both of which mean _you_


in polish:   *ty*  mean you . , *ta*  mean  this ( fem. )  *ta* dziewczyna , this girl.
ques*ta* ragazza,  in italian., this girl.


----------



## Encolpius

Polish: wiele (many)
German: viele (many)


----------



## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> Polish: wiele (many)
> German: viele (many)


Only as long as they stay written (and even then there's a one letter difference).


----------



## AndrasBP

I know it's not an exact coincidence, and the pronunciation of the letters <ai> is different, too, but still, I think it's remarkable that one of the meanings of the *Latvian *word '*gaita*' is '*gait*' in *English *(way of walking).
The two words don't seem to be related (I wasn't sure at first because there are a number of Low German loanwords in Latvian).


----------



## AndrasBP

The numeral 'seven' is '*sette*' in both *Italian *and *Yakut*, a Turkic language spoken in Siberia.


----------



## Gavril

Thought of a couple more:

1.
Finnish _*kiert-* _(infinitive _*kiertää*_*)* ”to turn, twist” (transitive), also ”to go around, avoid (something)”
– from the root _kier_-, < *_keer_- which shows up in various other terms referring to a circular/curved motion or shape (_kieriä_ ”to roll”, etc.).

English _*skirt*_ (verb) ”to avoid, evade” (among other meanings)
– from the noun _skirt,_ perhaps via the meaning ”to go around the edge/margin” (in addition to the article of clothing, _skirt _can also refer to other items that gird/surround something, such as protective skirts around the legs of a table)
_skirt _is cognate with the noun _shirt,_ the adjective _short_, etc.

The _s-_ of _skirt_ doesn't count against this resemblance, because the loss of the first consonant in a word-initial CC cluster is extremely regular in Finnic. (Cf. Finnish _kaappi_ ”cupboard, cabinet”, related to Norwegian _skap _”cabinet”.)

___________________________________
2.
Latin _pons, *ponte-*_ ”bridge” is cognate with various other terms meaning ”way, road” (e.g. Slovene _pot _“path, journey”).

Welsh _*hynt*_ ”path, course” closely resembles _ponte-_ (the sound change _p_ > _h_ is somewhat common, and is thought to have occurred in proto-Celtic).

However, _hynt_ (and its Celtic cognates) is instead thought to be cognate with English _send, _German_ senden, _Old English _sīþ_ "journey", etc. (The *_h_ from earlier *_p_ has mostly or entirely vanished in Welsh, leaving *s- as the main source of _h-_.)

___________________________________
3.
This example doesn't involve a semantic match, but I think it's too interesting to leave out:

Lithuanian *mėlynas* "blue", thought to be from a word meaning "black" or "dark" (cf. Latvian _melns_ "black", Greek _mélan-_ "black", etc.)

Welsh *melyn* "yellow", thought to be derived from the term for "honey" (cf. Latin _mel_ "honey", etc.)

Though they don't match semantically, these are both terms for a basic color that have been innovated relatively recently (i.e., they don't reflect the ancestral terms for these colors), and despite sounding very alike, they come from different respective sources.


----------



## dojibear

OneStroke said:


> 頭髮 - toufa - hair - sounds like toupee


The English word "toupee" is "tu-pei" in pinyin. So both vowels are totally different than the vowels in "tou-fa".



apmoy70 said:


> «τούφα»


That sounds the same (I think) as Chinese pinyin "tou-fa".


----------



## AndrasBP

This is a coincidence of a different type, but I hope it can stay here.
The Turkish word for 'crowd' or 'crowded' is* kalabalık*, which looks like a word entry in a Finnish-Turkish dictionary:

The Finnish word for 'fish' is *'kala'* , and '*balık' *also means 'fish' in Turkish.* *


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## Rallino

AndrasBP said:


> This is a coincidence of a different type, but I hope it can stay here.
> The Turkish word for 'crowd' or 'crowded' is* kalabalık*, which looks like a word entry in a Finnish-Turkish dictionary:
> 
> The Finnish word for 'fish' is *'kala'* , and '*balık' *also means 'fish' in Turkish.**



Yes, it's also a common name for fish restaurants in Turkey. The word both has the word "balık" (fish) in it, and it means "crowded", suggesting perhaps that it's a busy restaurant.


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## apmoy70

Rallino said:


> Yes, it's also a common name for fish restaurants in Turkey. The word both has the word "balık" (fish) in it, and it means "crowded", suggesting perhaps that it's a busy restaurant.
> 
> View attachment 54757


You don't want to know what *«καλαμπαλίκια»* [ka.lam.baˈli.ca] (found only in neut. nom. pl.) means in colloquial MoGr


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## Gavril

This is not a good coincidence, in my opinion, but it is an instructive example:

Spanish _*sudor*_ “sweat”, from the same root as Eng. _sweat_, etc.
Greek _*húdōr*_ “water”, cognate with Eng. _water_, German _Wasser, _etc.

Phonetically, the two words match almost exactly (the correspondence of Greek _h_- to Latin/Romance _s_- is quite normal).

However, semantically, it's not a match at all: water is not sweat, and sweat is not water.

Even if we regard sweat as a type of water (some languages' terms for water might exclude it), the word_ sweat _still occupies a vastly smaller conceptual territory – and therefore a vastly different conceptual territory – than that of_ water_.

Thus, this pair is a good example of how semantic precision is important in comparison, and how one can't rely solely on phonological matches (and an unsystematic hunch that two or more words “seem similar” semantically) to establish relationships between words.


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## Penyafort

*Catalan: *Una gran *noia* = A great girl
*Italian: *Una gran *noia *= A great boredom


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## alfaalfa

Ciao,
Italian:* curva* = curve, bend
Romanian:* curva = *bitch


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## Awwal12

alfaalfa said:


> Ciao,
> Italian:* curva* = curve, bend
> Romanian:* curva = *bitch


The latter looks Slavic in origin (cf. Polish  "kurwa" - "whore", "bitch"; also Belarusian, Ukrainian, dialectal Russian  "курва" - the same).


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## AndrasBP

"Noia" and "curva" belong in the "false friends" thread.
Please re-read the OP.


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## alfaalfa

AndrasBP said:


> "Noia" and "curva" belong in the "false friends" thread.
> Please re-read the OP.


You are right.


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## Penyafort

AndrasBP said:


> "Noia" and "curva" belong in the "false friends" thread.
> Please re-read the OP.



Oops, you're right indeed. Please someone move it and delete this.


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## AndrasBP

clamor said:


> Two personal pronouns.


Latvian "es" - I
German "es" - it


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## clamor

AndrasBP said:


> Latvian "es" - I
> German "es" - it


And Classical Armenian ''es'', I (Modern ''yes'')


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## AndrasBP

The Latvian and Armenian "es" pronouns might even be Indo-European cognates, but I'm not sure.


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## clamor

AndrasBP said:


> The Latvian and Armenian "es" pronouns might even be Indo-European cognates, but I'm not sure.


Yes, they are, you're right


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## Arme

Every Armenian knows that the word "stone" in Armenian is "քար[kar]", but in the dialects of Syunik and Artsakh regions, people also use the word.... "ռոք [ROCK]" which denotes a big stone and is recorded in ancient manuscripts by that meaning.


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## clamor

Western Armenian *gë këne* (he, she buys), Hebrew *hu kone *(he buys).  
Hebrew *agudal*, Hindi *anguthal *(thumb).


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## Włoskipolak 72

*Italian* = lato  (side)             *Polish* = lato  (summer)
Italian = panna (cream)         Polish = panna  (unmarried woman)
Italian = miele (honey)          Polish = miele  (I mill)
Italian = dai (u give)              Polish = daj (give)
Italian = tempo (time)            Polish = tempo (rate, pace)
Italian = pasta (dough)           Polish = pasta (paste, polish)
Italian = autostrada(highway)  Polish = autostrada (highway)
Italian = droga (drug)             Polish = droga (way)
Italian = divano (couch)          Polish = dywan (carpet)
Italian = pomodoro (tomato)   Polish = pomidor (tomato)
Italian = ala (wing)                 Polish = Ala (girl's name)
Italian = soffitto (ceiling)         Polish = sufit (ceiling)


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## clamor

Włoskipolak 72 said:


> *Italian* = lato  (side)             *Polish* = lato  (summer)
> Italian = panna (cream)         Polish = panna  (unmarried woman)
> Italian = miele (honey)          Polish = miele  (I mill)
> Italian = dai (u give)              Polish = daj (give)
> Italian = tempo (time)            Polish = tempo (rate, pace)
> Italian = pasta (dough)           Polish = pasta (paste, polish)
> Italian = autostrada(highway)  Polish = autostrada (highway)
> Italian = droga (drug)             Polish = droga (way)
> Italian = divano (couch)          Polish = dywan (carpet)
> Italian = pomodoro (tomato)   Polish = pomidor (tomato)
> Italian = ala (wing)                 Polish = Ala (girl's name)
> Italian = soffitto (ceiling)         Polish = sufit (ceiling)


If I'm not mistaken, some are not coincidences?


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## Włoskipolak 72

clamor said:


> If I'm not mistaken, some are not coincidences?


You're right they could be a false friends ?


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## AndrasBP

Włoskipolak 72 said:


> You're right they could be a false friends ?


This thread is about _word coincidences_, when two words in two languages look the same, mean the same, but they are not etymologically related. _False friends_ look the same or similar, but the meanings are different.
Now your list is full of words that don't belong to either category: Polish _tempo_, _pomidor _or _sufit _are loanwords from Italian and they have the same meaning as their Italian counterparts.


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## Włoskipolak 72

AndrasBP said:


> This thread is about _word coincidences_, when two words in two languages look the same, mean the same, but they are not etymologically related. _False friends_ look the same or similar, but the meanings are different.
> Now your list is full of words that don't belong to either category: Polish _tempo_, _pomidor _or _sufit _are loanwords from Italian and they have the same meaning as their Italian counterparts.


Sorry but I can't modify it anymore .. , I hope it won't be a  (big) problem..!?


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## clamor

Włoskipolak 72 said:


> Sorry but I can't modify it anymore .. , I hope it won't be a  (big) problem..!?


no, absolutely not  it was just a remark!


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## Vojvoda

alfaalfa said:


> Ciao,
> Italian:* curva* = curve, bend
> Romanian:* curva = *bitch


Serbian: _fem._ *kriva*  (curve, bend)
_fem._* kurva* (bitch) probably from _m._ *kurac* (penis) synonym _m_. *krivak* (penis) from _m. _*kriv* (curve, bend)


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## Vojvoda

German: _geist _("ghost") , Serbian: _gasiti (_"to extinguish") , Sanskrit _जसते_ (jásate, “to be extinguished”), _जासयति_ (jāsáyati, “to extinguish, to exhaust”)


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## AndrasBP

Turkish: hayır = "no"
Xhosa: hayi = "no"


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## Red Arrow

Dutch: *elkaar* = each other
Basque: *elkar* = each other


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## dojibear

Spanish uses "de"  for English "of".
Mandarin also uses "de" for English "of". 



patriota said:


> The Japanese often end their sentences with "ne."


So do Chinese (Mandarin) speakers.


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## Gavril

Two more:


1.

I don't think this example has been presented yet, but apologies if it has:

English agentive suffix *-er* (_read*er*, writ*er*, buy*er*_, etc.), and its Germanic cognates (Icelandic _-ari_, Scandinavian _-are_, etc.)
< Latin _-arius_, also the source of e.g. Spanish _-ero_ (_vaquero_ ”cowboy”, etc.)

Welsh *-wr* (pronounced [ur]), which commonly functions as an agentive suffix (cf. _nofiwr_ "swimmer" < _nofi-_ "to swim" + _-wr_)
< _gwr_ (pronounced [gur]) "man", "male" (cognate with e.g. Latin _vir_ "man"); historically, the suffix _-wr_ was only used to designate males, but this rule has eroded in recent times, so that e.g. _nofiwr_ can refer to a male or female swimmer.

This is probably not a pure coincidence: the Welsh use of _-wr_ as a general-purpose agentive suffix has likely been influenced (to some degree) by the similar-sounding English -_er_.

---------------------------------------------------

2.

English *cut*, probably from the same Germanic source as e.g. Old Swedish _kotta_ "to cut"

_*cut*ler_ "knife maker/repairer"
< French _coutelier_ < Latin _cultellus, culter_ "knife"

_*cut*let_ "slice of meat for broiling/frying"
< French _côtelette_, earlier _costelette_ < _coste_ "rib"


(A connection between _cutlet_ and _cut_ is also deceptively suggested by certain other languages' terms: German _Schnitzel_ "cutlet" < _schnitzen_ "to carve", Finnish _leike_ "cutting, cutlet" < _leikata_ "to cut".)


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## Encolpius

Czech: čiperný ("chipper")
English: chipper


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## ancalimon

Some fun coincidences between Turkic and English regarding Arthurian legend.

ex*calib*ur

Proto-Turkic: *čal- : 1 to knock (down), hit, agitate 2 to whet 3 to slaughter 4 to mow 5 scythe 6 to sting, pierce 7 to sweep 8 to chop 9 a k. of broom 10 to sharpen, whet 11 whetstone 12 mowing, hay time 13 to trip 14 blade

Proto-Turkic: *Kạl(ɨ)- : 1 to rise 2 jump up

Modern Turkish
Kılıç : sword
Kalıp : mould

Arthur

Er: Hero
Tur: Turk


Pen*dragon*

tarkan: Turkic honorary title


Bedivere

bahadır: Turkic given name; brave, gallant

EDIT: Just found a book regarding this subject which as far as I can tell, claims that these are not coincidences. Apparently others can also find similarities like these.

The Genesis of the Turks


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## Zareza

*zaraza*  /zaˈra.za/ (Polish) = plague, disease   (from Proto-Slavic)

*zaraza*  /za'ra.za/  (Spanish) = printed cotton fabric (*<* _zarzahán_ *<* (Hispanic Arabic) _zardaẖán_ *<* (Arabic) _zardaẖānah_ *<* (perhaps Persian) _zar doẖān_ - golden smoke)


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## Gavril

Another example that diverges from the original criteria, but that I think is too interesting to omit:


English _amateur_ "non-professional"

Finnish _ammatti_ "profession, vocation" (stressed on the first syllable like _amateur_)


This might appear to be a case of antonyms that somehow arose from the same original source. But in fact, _amateur_ comes (via French) from Latin _amator_ "lover, one who loves (to do something)", whereas Finnish _ammatti_ is from a Germanic source akin to Old High German _ambaht_ "servant", etc.


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