It's a really nice one, and I don't think
the fact that linguists regard Basque and Dutch as unrelated will discourage
a truly dedicated lookalike-hunter :-). I have long suspected that Dutch is
replete with Basque elements, but there is a conspiracy of orthodox
linguists who are trying to suppress the truth.
I still remember my own surprise when, in
the course of learning Old English, I realised that <sorry> and
<sorrow> were unrelated. The former _is_ related to <sore> (OE sa:r
< PGmc. *sair-a-), the latter (OE sorh, sorg < PGmc. *surg-o:)
derives from the PIE root *swergH-with such cognates as Alb. dergjem 'lie down
suffering'.
Sometimes the folk-etymological feeling
that similar words MUST be related is so strong that it leads to their formal
convergence, reflected e.g. in spelling changes and semantic shifts. English
<cinder> (from OE sinder 'slag') had originally nothing to do with French
<cendre> 'ashes' (from Lat. cinis, ciner-), but the similarity of sound
and meaning led to the Frenchification of the spelling of the English word and
influenced its main sense.
Another well-known pair of false cognates
is <isle> (from OFr. isle < Lat. insula) and <island> (ME yland
< OE i:eg-land- 'water-land, river-land', where the first element is a
relative of Lat. aqua). The modern spelling of <island> owes its
<-s-> to the association with <isle>.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2002 6:31 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Pseudo-cognates
> 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.
> The condition is that the
pseudo-cognacy should be due to pure
chance (which excludes onomatopoeia,
nursery words and the like).
I didn't think I should have any
interesting thing to say in such a
specialized forum as this (just reading
your posts is more than
enough for me); but maybe you may find this
'pseudo-cognate' rather
funny (though the fact that Basque and Nederlands
have non genetical
relationship excludes any idea of connection even for the
non-
linguists):
Basque: ELKAR ---
Nederlands-Dutch: ELKAAR
Both of them meaning 'each other'
(Basque one is the'accusative'
form, others being 'elkarren', 'elkarri',
'elkarrekin',...)
* Basque ELKAR (in fact it is Gipuzkoan and
Navarrese, and also the
accepted standard form; others are: Western ALKAR
and Eastern
ALKHAR / ALGAR, and Northern literary standard ELKHAR) most
probably
has its origin in *hark har (kinda "he him", without
gender).
As for Dutch ELKAAR, I suppose the first element to be
ELK 'each'.
I was really impressed by this similarity the
first time I got a
Dutch grammar, but maybe nobody else will
:-))