# Cognates



## Henjek

I am trying to learn Polish. I understood that there are things called "cognates", something loike the word in english is "garden" and in Polish it is "ogrod". The "grd" indicating that these words derived from the same original motherword. This helps me a lot in remembering words. I would like to find a list of threse words. Does any one have an idea where I can find it?
Thanx


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## Faycelina

Do you a list with cognate words from English to Polish? That's gonna be difficult  I don't know if such list exists...
Maybe you'd be also interested in a list from French to Polish. I've never realised that we have so many French origin words in Polish but my fiancé is French speaking and when he learns Polish, it happens very often that he says "Oh, it's similar to French!"


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## Henjek

Hi Faycelina, 

A list with cognates Polish / French would also be very welcome. Do you know something like that?


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## Faycelina

Unfortunately I don't have such list... I'd have to make it continuously with my fiancé as he learns and compares PL words with FR ones. I'm sorry I can't help...


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## Lorenc

Yours is a very interesting idea Henjek, and I was wondering as well if such a thing exists. To me etymological analysis is very useful in remembering new words. It would be nice to have a electronic dictionary which reported the etymology of words, so that one could see all words of, say, French, German (etc.) origin. Alas, I don't think such a dictionary exists. 
From time to time I have tried note down words which resemble Italian (though they are not necessarily words of Italian origin). In many cases the same words also resemble English (and probably most Indoeuropean languages): inżynier, architekt, chirurg, kanalia, oko, rezultat, stacja...
Specifically similar to Italian are are a few words connected with music, food and clothes: pomodor, cebula, pomarańcza, trąba, kontrabas, kapelusz, parasol...

Anyway, a part from these "trivial" cases, the really interesting thing would be to find cognates though protoindoeuropean (PIE), for example analysing list such as this [_I'm forbidden to post URLs, just google Indo-European lexicon utexas_]

For example, ogień (fire), PIE egnisgnis, latin ignis; 
PIE root leuk- (light/shine), English light, latin "lux" and "luna", Polish łuna

I don't know if a scholarly study of this kind has been done. If it has, I'd imagine it's never been used outside academic circles...


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## Faycelina

I think in some books you can find lists which you need. Probably not full lists but some short ones. Or at least "false friends" which should be pretty common


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## Henjek

Thanx Lorenc, 
Yes some words resemble Italian or a francophone origin. There were borrowed words from the Napoleontian time. Anyway these new words like engineer are not too hard. But the old ones ... 
By the way I think "kapelusz" comes from Hebrew ("keppel"). 
And yes they must have a PIE origin. I will check your suggestion. But untill so far I have only found lists with Slavic languages and not compared to German languages, unfortunately!
Also I found a book on the net in which they want to use cognates in learning English to Polish people in the UK. So there must be something out there. 
First I try your suggestion. Thanx!


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## Encolpius

Henjek said:


> I am trying to learn Polish. I understood that there are things called "cognates", something loike the word in english is "garden" and in Polish it is "ogrod". The "grd" indicating that these words derived from the same original motherword. This helps me a lot in remembering words. I would like to find a list of threse words. Does any one have an idea where I can find it?
> Thanx



Hello, the Polish vocabulary is Slavic and even though you find some French Polish cognates, those Polish words won't help you much to speak basic or advanced Polish. Most cognates are far away from the spoken Polish.


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## bibax

I suppose that you didn't mean such words like film, kurtyna (curtain), bandaż, krawat, handel (bussiness), kelner (waiter), biuro, fryzura etc.

They are not cognates but loanwords from German, French, Italian, English, and other languages.

Some Polish loanwords are very old like kosciół (castellum - church), cebula (caepula - onion), koszula (casula - shirt), wino (vinum - wine). Some words of Slavic origin are old loanwords from Germanic like książe (kunning - king/prince) or pieniądze (penning - penny/money).

Examples of true cognates (English/German - Latin - Polish/Czech):

brother/Bruder - frater - brat/bratr
sister/Schwester - soror - sióstra/sestra
mother/Mutter - mater - matka/mateř
son - (filius) - syn
two/zwei - duo - dwa
three/drei - tres - trzy
eight/acht - octo - osiem
hundred/hundert - centum - sto
heart/Hertz - cors (cord-) - serce/srd-ce
apple/Äpfel - (malum) - jabłko/j-abl-ko
(full/voll?) - plenus - pełny/plný
water/Wasser - (aqua) - woda
night/Nacht - nox - noc
garden/Garten - hortum - gród (ogorod)/hrad (zahrada)
milk/Milch - (lact-) - mleko
loaf - (panis) - chleb
new/neu - novus - nowy
(ear) - auris - ucho
mouse - mus - mysz
snow/Schnee - nix - śnieg/sníh
etc.


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## Henjek

Thank you Bibax, 

Yes I did not mean the recent loanwords, for the most part they are quite obvious. But thanx for the other ones: very helpful. I knew pienanze, but now that I see it comes from Penning, it is so much easier! And fun too. 
This is what I am looking for. Do you know where I can find such lists? That would be so helpful.


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## Lorenc

I too thank you Bibax, it's an interesting list. I would never have guessed _pieniądze _is related with _penny _or _kościół_ with _castellum_... Also h_ortum/ogród_ was illuminating (in Italian _orto_ means vegetable garden). Personally, from the point of view of  learning in practice new words, everything goes if it can be a help for memory: loanwords, cognates, coincidences... anything which creates an association and thus makes the process of recalling easier. Knowing already Italian, English, French and Latin it would be nice to capitalize on this learning Polish. Does anyone knows of any study material which presents such tables?


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## PawelBierut

I have one example which is interesting to me... I think that these words have the same root.

So there is a word _yayo _in Spanish (English _grandpa_) which in my opinion resembles Polish _dziadzio, dziadek._ The meaning and pronunciation is almost the same.

So
Spanish / Polish

yayo / dziadzio = dziadek 

I don't know anything about the existence of the list that you search for however it's quite possible that we will have it here in a short period of time.


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## Ben Jamin

PawelBierut said:


> I have one example which is interesting to me... I think that these words have the same root.
> 
> So there is a word _yayo _in Spanish (English _grandpa_) which in my opinion resembles Polish _dziadzio, dziadek._ The meaning and pronunciation is almost the same.
> 
> So
> Spanish / Polish
> 
> yayo / dziadzio = dziadek
> 
> I don't know anything about the existence of the list that you search for however it's quite possible that we will have it here in a short period of time.


A warning: using cognates in the initial stage of learning a language does not help very much, but can bring about much confusion. Apart from the useful examples given by Bibax you will find plenty of false friends, as for example English eventual and Polish ewentualny. Basing on cognates is the main source of bad command of a foreign language, when one takes a word from his/her own language and believes that it means the same as a similar word in another language. Using cognates is fun for etymology lovers, but dangerous to "common learners". By the way, many people believe that they have made a real etymological catch realizing that Spanish mucho has similar meaning with English much. In fact these words are NOT cognates (false cognates). Latin habere is not a cognate of the Germanic haben/have either. Yayo (never heard before, the normal word for grandfather in Spanish is abuelo) certainly is not a cognate of dziadzio.


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## PawelBierut

Ben Jamin said:


> Yayo (never heard before, the normal word for grandfather in Spanish is abuelo) certainly is not a cognate of dziadzio.



I mostly agree with you... I don't know if these words are cognates or not... Don't have sufficient knowledge about it. Probably they are not.

Just in case here you have the entry for a word:

http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=yayo


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## Encolpius

Henjek said:


> ...Do you know where I can find such lists? That would be so helpful.



You can find lists like that at the end of some very good *etymology dictionaries* or search in digital etymology dictionaries. But I do not know if there are dictionaries of that type in Polish.


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## Ben Jamin

PawelBierut said:


> I mostly agree with you... I don't know if these words are cognates or not... Don't have sufficient knowledge about it. Probably they are not.
> 
> Just in case here you have the entry for a word:
> 
> http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=yayo


 
There is a greek word γιαγιά (yaya) meaning grandmother. Maybe this word has something to do with the Spanish (slang or dialect?) word. It would be interesting to know where the word is used.


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## themanlyman

this pdf has a list of polish cognates
www .scribd. com /doc /116980860 / how-to-learn-7-languages-barnes-method-english

you will find more polish cognates between slavic languages, so if you know russian etc then you'll have a more complete list

usually cognates look the same with just the final letters changing, you can pronounce them the same as you native language except for the final syllable, and you'll just sound Like you have an accent

its a good place to start a language (cognates) and can enhance anyone's 2nd language if you haven't already used it


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