Cognates

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Cognates

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-08-03, 18:16

The idea is for this thread to be along the lines of the "True False Friends" thread, but for actual cognates. Any that you find strange, unexpected or interesting are welcome, but only actual cognates please, no folk etymologies, coincidences or crack-pot theories.

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Re: Cognates

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-08-03, 18:19

[flag=]ga[/flag] - say
[flag=]gd[/flag] ràdh - say
[flag=]sr[/flag] raditi - to do

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Re: Cognates

Postby loqu » 2014-08-03, 20:25

IT cercare, to search
FR chercher, to search
CA cercar, to search
ES cercar, to fence, to enclose
PT cercar, to fence, to surround
Нека људи уживају у стварима.
Let people enjoy things.

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Re: Cognates

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-08-03, 21:53

[flag=]de[/flag] kaufen - to buy
[flag=]nl[/flag] kopen - to buy
[flag=]sv[/flag] att köpa - to buy
[flag=]sr[/flag] kupiti - to buy

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Re: Cognates

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-03, 23:37

Is it okay if more than one of them is in the same language? :)

Tamil (ta) கள் [kəɭ] 'palm wine, honey'
Tamil (ta) களிறு [kəˈɭirɯ] 'male elephant'
Malayalam (ml) കള്ള് [ˈkəɭɭɯ] 'palm wine'
Malayalam (ml) കളിക്കുക [kəˈɭikʲʊga] 'to play'
Koḍava [kəˈɭi](?) 'play'

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Re: Cognates

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-08-04, 12:49

Sure, I can't see why not.

[flag=]ga[/flag] fear - man
[flag=]gd[/flag] fear - man
[flag=]gv[/flag] fer - man
[flag=]en[/flag] werewolf
[flag=]is[/flag] ver - man, husband
[flag=]la[/flag] vir - man
[flag=]lv[/flag] vīrs - man, husband
[flag=]lt[/flag] výras - man, husband

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Re: Cognates

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-08-04, 22:04

I always found this one to be interesting:

[flag=]ar[/flag] قتل qatala "kill"
[flag=]he[/flag] קָטַל qāṭal "kill"

The Hebrew word has an emphatic /t/ while the Arabic doesn't, and there is no phonological reason why this would be so.
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Re: Cognates

Postby linguoboy » 2014-08-05, 21:16

That reminds me of another anomaly:

[flag=]ca[/flag] fotre
[flag=]es[/flag] joder
[flag=]fr[/flag] foutre
[flag=]it[/flag] fottere
[flag=]pt[/flag] foder
[flag=]ro[/flag] fute

The regular Spanish reflex of Latin futuere would've been *hoder. (Cf. FUCAREM > hogar.) It's believed that Old Spanish /h/ was strengthened to /x/ in this word for affective reasons.
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Re: Cognates

Postby loqu » 2014-08-05, 21:26

Yes, that always striked me, because we Western Andalusians pronounce the 'h' that comes from a Latin 'f' the same way we pronounce the 'j', but that one is accepted in Standard Spanish as 'j'. Must be the only word in that case.
Нека људи уживају у стварима.
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Re: Cognates

Postby linguoboy » 2014-08-05, 21:33

loqu wrote:Yes, that always striked me, because we Western Andalusians pronounce the 'h' that comes from a Latin 'f' the same way we pronounce the 'j', but that one is accepted in Standard Spanish as 'j'. Must be the only word in that case.

The only other exception I can think of is jondo in the phrase cante jondo, but here we're dealing with a direct loan from Andalusian.
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Re: Cognates

Postby Ciarán12 » 2014-08-06, 15:23

[flag=]ga[/flag] as - out of, of, from
[flag=]la[/flag] ex - out of, from
[flag=]sr[/flag] iz - from

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Re: Cognates

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-08, 20:33

I brought this one up on this forum once not too long ago:

English (en) lox
Hindi (hi) लाख [lakʰ] '100,000' (also the Indian English word spelled variously as lakh or lac, with the same meaning)

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Re: Cognates

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-08-08, 21:04

I am so glad lox doesn't cost nearly as much as one lakh.
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Re: Cognates

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-12, 9:40

This is the word for 'pig' in the major Dravidian languages. The only difference is the medial consonants, and I think these forms help show how that developed over time in various languages (in particular, where Malayalam gets its phonemic dental nasals from - from a consonant cluster that originally had nothing to do with dentals at all!):

Tamil (ta) (Centamil) பன்றி [ˈpəndri]
Tamil (ta) (Madurai dialect) [ˈpənni] (I've seen this represented in writing as பன்னி, but only in a Tamil language course)
Malayalam (ml) പന്നി [ˈpən̪n̪i]
Kannada (kn) ಪಂದಿ / Telugu (te) పంది [ˈpən̪d̪i]

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Re: Cognates

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-14, 19:43

These Semitic words are apparently related in some way to 'wine', but I can't say they're cognates with that word because they're Semitic, not Indo-European:

Arabic (ar) وين wayn 'black grapes' (apparently, but I don't know which varieties of Arabic this applies to :?)
Hebrew (he) יין yayn 'wine, intoxication'
Amharic (am) ወይን wäyən 'grape'

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Re: Cognates

Postby linguoboy » 2014-08-14, 20:01

vijayjohn wrote:These Semitic words are apparently related in some way to 'wine', but I can't say they're cognates with that word because they're Semitic, not Indo-European:

But most historical linguists consider this a Wanderwort which has been borrowed between families. The cognates of kaufen listed above all ultimately derive from Latin caupō, not directly from Proto-Indo-European.
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Re: Cognates

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-14, 20:04

Okay, so it's a Wanderwort after all (though I guess confined to the Mediterranean). Thanks.

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Re: Cognates

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-08-14, 20:12

vijayjohn wrote:These Semitic words are apparently related in some way to 'wine', but I can't say they're cognates with that word because they're Semitic, not Indo-European:

Arabic (ar) وين wayn 'black grapes' (apparently, but I don't know which varieties of Arabic this applies to :?)
Hebrew (he) יין yayin 'wine, intoxication'
Amharic (am) ወይን wäyən 'grape'
This always struck me as an odd one, but it makes sense since wine is thought to be from the Caucasus area and the word would've spread from there to the Fertile Crescent as well as Europe.

Also, the shift in Hebrew where word-initial /w/ becomes /j/. Yeird.
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Re: Cognates

Postby linguoboy » 2014-08-14, 20:13

vijayjohn wrote:Okay, so it's a Wanderwort after all (though I guess confined to the Mediterranean). Thanks.

No, it's found in the Caucasus as well and--thanks to Latin--in all languages of the North Atlantic.

mōdgethanc wrote:Also, the shift in Hebrew where word-initial /w/ becomes /j/. Yeird.

For some reason, that strikes me as markedly less odd than the reverse.
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Re: Cognates

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-08-14, 20:26

linguoboy wrote:For some reason, that strikes me as markedly less odd than the reverse.
Is there any language you know of where that has happened? I can't think of any.

I'm thinking it seems more likely because in order to go from [j] to [w], you need to add a labial component where there wasn't one before. Unless there's a conditioning factor like rounded vowels, this seems unlikely to me. Even then, you might end up with [ɥ] instead.
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