#false cognate

[muslimintp-1999-girl]

The Urdu/Persian word "behtar" and the English word "better" have the same meaning so I thought they might have the same origin but apparently they don't.

Also the Korean word "manhi" and the English word "many" sound similar and have similar meaning but aren't related or come from the same origin as well.

And that's when I learnt that these occurrences are called false cognates (there is also a concept called false friend). Languages are so fascinating.

[hmantegazzi]

Have you noticed that Columbus is a tremendous case of nominative determinism, or a huge coincidence?

For starters, his personal name, Christopher, is an Hellenic name, Christo-phoros, meaning 'Christ-bearer', and it became widespread among Christians for the legend of the eponymous saint, who carried an unknown and uncannily heavy child across a river, that happened to be THE Jesus and then said to the man that the weight he had loaded was the entire world and his creator.

What did this other Christopher? Crossed another body of water, carrying with himself the Christian religion and all the good and bad (and super very bad) things of the so-called 'Old World' to the Americas.

But ok, Christopher was a common name back then, so it's not so hard for it to be a coincidence.

Now, Columbus?

Even if the surname strictly refers to a dove or pigeon (and you still could get some extra religious imaginery from that), the weird part is how the noun gets reused and suffixed when making reference to him. Especially in Spanish, where the surname doesn't have the b, and is instead just 'Colón'.

What did Colón do in the Americas? He colon-ised them, creating colon-ies, which only got to be called 'Colombia' or 'Columbia' because 'Colonia' was already a taken toponym for the southern German city.

I'm going to be honest with you: it took too much time to child me to get that the concept of colony wasn't derived from the name of the guy who started the biggest colonisation event in the history of humanity, and instead from the Proto-Indo-European '*kʷel-', to move around, till or dwell, and that it's cognate with 'pole' and 'inquiline'. It just made too much sense, and the alternative almost none of it, except for the fact that 'colonia' in Latin had the current meaning as it has now for at least a millennium before Colón was even born!

[necarion]

An uncognate of stevens:

I was looking up the etymology of the German Stimme/stimmen, which is German for "vote/voice" in the noun form, o3 "to vote" or "to tune (an instrument)" in the verb form. And I found that one surviving close cognate in Middle English was "steven" (not the name), meaning "a vote". It's basically non-existent in Modern English outside Scots and some rare dialects in England. However, we do have one descendent, which is "even steven", a rhyme doubling meaning, essentially "all votes/shares are equal". This is completely backward from what I thought the etymology was (i.e. that the "steven" was added to the "even", and not the other way around), and means that the "steven" here should never be capitalized.

"Stimme" and this dialectical "steven" are ultimately derived from the PIE word "*stomen-" meaning "mouth" so probaly cognate with the Greek/Latin "stoma", meaning there is a distant cognate in much greater use.

"Even steven" has nothing to do with the names "Steven/Stephen/Stephan", which is from the Greek->Latin Stephanus (from στέφω / stéphō, “to put round, to surround”), so the name Steven carries the implication of "ruler/conqueror".

Neither "Steven" nor "even steven" have anything to do with the "stevedore" dockworker. That's from the Spanish "estipador", from a Latin word meaning "to cram/load/stuff" and is cognate with the modern English "stiff".

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/even_steven#English

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Steven

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/stevedore

stevedore - Wiktionary

[sporadicetymology]

Yaaay, false cognates! I’m always pleasantly surprised by these, for some reason.

Sources: Wiktionary & Online Etymology Dictionary

[haxyr3]

Russian False Cognates: Letter И

Иллюминатор - Porthole

Имидж - only one meaning: the general impression that a person, organization, or product presents to the public. Image as a picture - образ, изображение.

Инфляция - only about money; 'inflating a balloon' would be надувание, надувать шар.

Инструмент - tool, instrument (the latter usually takes an adjective - измерительный инструмент, музыкальный инструмент)

Инсульт - stroke; insult - оскорбление

Интеллигент - an intellectual; well-educated person

Интервью - only a meeting at which information is obtained (as by a reporter, television commentator); when not for media, it would be собеседование, job interview - собеседование при приёме на работу;

Изоляция, изолировать - both isolation and insulation (to isolate and to insulate).

[erin-irl]

Angel y Estela se vistieron con ropa elegante.

Me: What's the sentence say? Student: Angel and Estela visited an elegant rope? 😐😂

[nonconjournalism]

Wordle 383 3/6*

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[pomelopaloma]