Cognates are words that have a common origin.
- nekwt-'', "night." Another Indo-European example is ''star'' (English), ''str'' (Sanskrit), ''étoile'' (French) ''star'' ( Sinhala ), ''aster'' ( Greek ), ''stella'' (Latin, Italian ), ''stea'' (Romanian and Venetian ), ''stairno'' ( Gothic ), ''Stern'' (German), ''ster'' (Dutch and Afrikaans ), ''starn'' (Scots), ''stjerne'' ( Norwegian ), ''stjarna'' ( Icelandic ), ''setare'' ( Persian ), ''seren'' ( Welsh ), ''steren'' ( Cornish ), ''estel'' ( Catalan ), ''estrella'' (Spanish), ''estrela'' (Portuguese) and ''estêre'' ( Kurdish ), from PIE ''---ster-'', "star".
Hebrew ''shalom'' and Arabic ''salaam'' are also cognates deriving from a common Semitic root.
- wer-'', "to perceive, watch out for") are cognate as are ''shirt'' and ''skirt'' (Old Norse (which was mutually intelligible with Old English ) borrowed when the Viking s owned part of England. Sometimes, both cognates come from other languages, often the same one but at different times. For example, the word ''chief'' comes from the Middle French ''chef'', and its modern pronunciation preserves the Middle French consonant sound. The word ''chef'' was borrowed from the same source centuries later, by which time the consonant had changed to a "sh"-sound in French. Such words are said to be Etymological Twins .
- melg-'', "to milk"). On the other hand, French ''lait'' and Spanish ''leche'' (both meaning "milk") are less obviously cognates of Greek ''galaktos'' (genitive form of ''gala'', milk) (<''---g(a)lag-'', ''galakt-'').
Cognates need not have the same meaning: ''dish'' ( English ) and ''Tisch'' ("table", German ), or ''starve'' ( English ) and ''sterben'' ("die", German ), or ''head'' ( English ) and ''chef'' ("chief, head", French ), serve as examples as to how cognate terms may Diverge In Meaning as languages develop separately, eventually becoming False Friends .
- g''''ou''-, ''cow'' having developed through the Germanic Language Family while ''beef'' has arrived in English from the Italo-Romance family descent.
Cognates may thus also arise through borrowings into languages. So the resemblance between English ''to pay'' and French ''payer'' originates through English borrowing ''to pay'' from Norman which, like French, had derived its word from Gallo-Romance.
False cognates
See Also: False cognate
- kap, 'to grasp', and its real cognate in Latin is ''capere'', 'to seize, grasp, capture'. Latin ''habere'', on the other hand, is from PIE ---ghabh, 'to give, to receive', and hence cognate with English ''give'' and German ''geben''.
The similarity of words between languages is ''not'' enough to demonstrate that the words are related to each other, in much the same way that facial resemblance does not determine whether two people are genetically related. Over the course of hundreds and thousands of years, words may change their sound completely. Thus, for example, English ''five'' and Sanskrit ''pança'' are cognates, while English ''over'' and Hebrew ''a'var'' are not, and neither are English ''dog'' and Mbabaram ''dog''.
Contrast this with False Friend s, which frequently ''are'' cognate.
See also
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