Re: Pseudo-cognates

--- In cybalist@..., "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
> wrote:
> > It might be instructive to collect a cautionary list of
> pseudo-cognates, i.e. words so spectacularly similar in form and
> meaning that anyone but a linguist (who can _prove_ that they are

not

> related) would take a connection for granted. Oft-quoted handbook
> examples include:
> >
> > Eng. day / Lat. die:s 'day'

Alternation dH- vs. d-?

> > Eng. bad / Farsi bad 'bad'

Disprove this: It is an Alanic loan to Germanic which survives only
in English?

> > Gk. tHeos 'god' / Lat. deus 'god'

alternation dH- vs. d-?

> > Mod.Gk. máti 'eye'/ Indonesian mata 'eye'
> >
> >
> > I'd add things like
> >
> > Eng. much / Sp. mucho
> > Eng. freeze / Lat. fri:geo: (no, <fridge> and <freezer> aren't
> cognates)

Let me guess: *pr- vs. *bHr-?

> >
> > Any ideas? The condition is that the pseudo-cognacy should be due

to

> pure chance (which excludes onomatopoeia, nursery words and the

like).

> >
> > Piotr
>
> Eng. die (v.) / Thai taai 'die'
> (The /t/ is written 'dt' in some teaching books to emphasis the
> difference from English /t/ (= Thai /th/) and English /d/).
>
> I don't know how much the following cross-pair should be excluded:
>
> Eng. ma 'mother' / Thai maa 55 'horse'
> Eng. mare / Thai mae 42 'mummy'
>
> The problems are that ma & mae are nursery words (with phor

42 'daddy'

> completing the pair!) and that 'maa', presumably an early loan from
> Chinese, may actually be derived from (Western?) IE *markos 'horse'.
>
> Then again, there are some pairs I can't quite exclude:
>
> Old Norse hvalr 'whale' / Thai (plaa 33) wa:n 33 'whale'
>
> 'Plaa' is a classificatory prefix, 'fish'. The Thai is spelt

<wa:L>,

> where the 'L' is an extra letter (beyond the Sanskrit set) used for
> the 'l' of 'Tamil' - 'lor julaa'. But <wa:l> is already used for a
> Sanskrit-looking word. Torsten might have some wild thoughts on

this

> one!

I'd have to invoke the well-known IE-Austronesian alternation k-
/nothing-. ;-) Isn't it too squal-id?
But here's another one I came across:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/8831/poclex1.html

Proto-Oceanic
asu scoop or ladle out; ladle, bailer
Danish
øse idem
please note the nice u-umlaut.
And while we're having wet feet: Japanese ikari "anchor".
I've used this one before
Proto-Oceanic
waga large sailing canoe; outrigger canoe (generic)
IE
*wegH- -> wain; road; move etc
which would have to include an unpleasantly large semantic shift; but
I just discovered that the root occurs in 'wind' too...

>
>
> Richard.

Torsten