Re: False Congnates

>One of our readers, Peter P, has offered Finnish poika 'boy,
>son': English boy (we can add it to the "boy -- Rom. bãiat" pair).
>
>This leads to another nice pseudo-correspondence. <poika>
>is a Finno-Ugric word, and its reflex in Hungarian is <fiú>.

And: Hung. pulyka /pujka/ "turkey" -- Rum. puica + diminutival
puiculitza (fem. of "pui", i.e. bird child as well as of any animal (
cub etc.) as well as figuratively "pui de om") -- Hung. puja (the
same; this maybe >I dunno< Rum. loanword).

Alex would perhaps deny the link Rum. pui -- Lat. pullus [young
puer] (incl. pullus pecoris, pullus gallinacei), but I don't. :)

>If we didn't know that, the following correspondence would appear
>self-evident:
>
>Hung. fiú -- Romanian fiu, It. figlio, Port. filho (from Lat. filius).

(Noteworthy: the pronunciation of fiú and fiam (my son) tends to
be rather /-ij-/.)

as well as suff. "-fi" (if noble: -(f)fy) = -son/-sen, M(a)c, ben/bin/ibn,
oglu.

>Piotr

g