Talk:False cognate

message: These three words, which I've for a long time suspected of being cognates (they sound very similarly and all are military-related), apparently derive from three different sources ("march" is from PIE *mereg "edge, boundary", "marshal" is from PIE *markos "horse" (well that's what Wiktionary says), and "martial" is from the Latin god Mars<*Mavors, which almost certainly isn't from either of the above). Do you think that this triple (or at least part of it) is significant enough to be included in the article?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.141.164.64 (talk) 21:34, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The English words "march", "marshal" and "martial" 

message: The entry for מסתורין ("mistorin" - mystery) in the Hebrew Wiktionary reads roughly:
--------------------------------------
...
Etymology:
1. While the root of the word מסתורין is ס-ת-ר, it's source is the Greek word μυστηριον (Mystirion), which means a secret, secret rituals. Many other languages derive their "mystery" from the same source.
2. In the Talmud, the word is usually written, as transliterated Greek, with the letter teth (ט) as מסטורין, but also with tav, signaling its connection to the Hebrew root [My comment: The Hebrew root סתר is associated with, among other things, hiding and obscurity as in the words להסתיר (to hide) or נסתר (hidden, obscure)]
3. Other Hebrew words were also renovated based on the meaning of the Hebrew root and similarity in sound to a foreign word (גאון (gaon) - genious, מסכה (masekha) - mask and more)
...
--------------------------------------
I'm not a linguist myself, and I'm not sure what's the best thing to do here: on the one hand, the words are false cognates, in the sense that the meaning of the Hebrew word is derived from the Hebrew root which doesn't share a root (as far as I know) with the Greek word.
On the other hand, this is a much weaker form of false cognates, as the Greek word only resembled a previously nonexistent structure of the root סתר (s.t.r), and was essentially borrowed and fitted to look like a Hebrew word.
Any ideas?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.65.201.192 (talk) 22:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not a linguist either, but I'd consider them true cognates. The potential existed in the Hebrew language to form the word מסתורין, but it was not formed until outside influence from Greek (from what I gather). The fact that it fit into a pre-existing root itself a false cognate of μυστηριον is of no consequence I think. So Hebrew did indeed borrow the word from Greek, making it a cognate with English "mystery". 70.29.63.164 (talk) 23:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: In other words, it's really a form of phono-semantic matching. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  English mysterious, Hebrew "mistori" (מסתורי) 

message: Estonian mina/Finnish minä (I), and Zulu mina (I); also in Turkish men/ben (I), in English me/my/mine ,etc. a Black African Aurignacian word??? (so NOT a false cognate!) Böri (talk) 13:53, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no good evidence that these words have a common origin. The connection with Aurignacian culture is highly speculative. garik (talk) 15:23, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

text: Estonian sina/Finnish sinä (singular you) and Turkish sen (singular you) 
Both minä - men / ben and sinä - sen are resembles a lot. There are also minun - menim, sinun - senin, hän - an etc. --88.251.4.159 (talk) 04:11, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mina = "I" 

message: If I were to follow the reasoning of this revert strictly, I'd have to remove the entire list of examples because almost none are reliably sourced. However, per WP:PRESERVE, it would be wise to find a better place on another Wikimedia project to put these false cognates. In this archived section, I suggested making it a Wiktionary appendix, but it never got anywhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Damian Yerrick (talk • contribs) 
:So even if off Wikimedia, how would we go about finding a better place for this list? --Damian Yerrick (talk) 16:55, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving the list 

message: Some words came from the Ice Age. Böri (talk) 11:32, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some of them are NOT false cognates! 

message: Aren't some of the English words and Latin (or Latin's direct descendant languages like French, Spanish, or other Romance languages) words nearly cognates by definition as 30% of English being derived from Latin words with another 30% being derived from a Norman/French background which in itself could be attributed to a Latin background? Not saying any words here are wrong, but some might warrant looking over especially when dealing with a progenitor language or two tongues that happen to be cousins.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.39.11 (talk) 07:53, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: If roots in two Indo-European languages are shown through sound change laws to come from different reconstructed proto-Indo-European roots, a false cognate is more likely than a loan. Case in point: German German haben (have) looks like Latin habere (have) but is related to Latin capere (take). In this case, it is recommended to try to cite a PIE dictionary. --Damian Yerrick (talk) 17:01, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issue of some words actually being related cognates 

message: I wonder how to handle such cases as English name and Malay nama. The Malay word is a borrowing from Sanskrit nāman, which is an actual cognate of English name. If an example like this doesn't count, we're getting into trouble with a case such as Hungarian tíz, which is considered an early borrowing from Iranian – compare especially Ossetic dæs, a true cognate of Spanish diez. Counting borrowed cognates would obviously be impracticable and lead to an endless list full of uninteresting cases – but sometimes a borrowing is only suspected, not certain, for example in some of the Semitic/Indo-European equations, like in the numeral "seven". Is the possibility of a borrowing strong enough in the case of Hungarian tíz? My impression is that the hypothesis is pretty established, but it's not the most obvious case (and even obvious seeming cases such as Mbabaran dog can mislead). Where should the cut-off be? This one is a real headache. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:41, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say they should be considered true cognates. They both can trace their roots back to the same word (namely PIE hnomn). If you aren't going to consider borrowed words cognates you might as well consider English "cream" and French "creme" to be false cognates. 218.214.92.142 (talk) 09:21, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This doesn't answer the question what to do if a borrowing is not completely certain (as in the case of the numerals mentioned). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:20, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Borrowed cognates 

message: False cognates, true friends
I record how false cognates sound by speech synthesizers. --Rostofanych (talk) 07:50, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  A group at Facebook 

message: I think that the definition of False Cognate is wrong in this article. This is what I found searching the internet, and please, if you found a credible source showing I'm wrong please respond because I'm going crazy with this.
The article states: False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots.
While a more correct definition would be: False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form but have different roots and meaning.
And there's also a lot of confusion about the difference of False Cognate and False Friend even with dictionaries like Macmillan Dictionary using both terms as the same with the definition of "a word in a language that looks or sounds similar to a word in another language but means something different". [macmillion ref - Edited by user:IronMaidenRocks] and this article that is hosted by Brown, but I don't know if it's a article from them or they are just hosting.
The difference is that although both False Cognate and False Friend are similar words with different meaning, False Cognate don't have common origin while False Friend could have. It's like... all False Cognate are False Friend but not all False Friend are False Cognate.
The problem is that my research in English either came with articles saying they are the same, or articles quoting the difference given in this article from wikipedia, witch does not have a source for the definition given, like this one from Princeton, that is just a copy of the wikipedia page.
One example of False Friend would be the word Fabric in English with the word Fábrica in Portuguese that means Factory, they have the same root, the word Fabrica in Latin but different meaning.
One example of False Cognate would be the word Cute in English with the word Cute in Portuguese that means Skin, they are the same word with different roots, Cute in English being the Latin word Acutus while the Portuguese Cute being the Latin word Cutis.
The articles that I found supporting my claim is not in English, being the most comprehensive one this article in Portuguese. But since this terms were created in French, with the meaning being the same in almost every language, I don't think would be a problem.
Mateusmat (talk) 13:01, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: A definition of "false cognate" that does not even require a similarity in meaning would be ridiculously broad. Words that sound similar but mean something totally different are ubiquitous and therefore completely uninteresting. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:46, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

text: A term for this is already defined as a faux ami or false friend and this article links to the page as something not to be confused with. Perhaps it should define a false friend at the top as well so it's easier to know what the confusion means. Kamusistiĉo (talk) 00:28, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The definition of False Cognate is wrong. 

message: Some historical linguists presume that all languages go back to a single common ancestor. Therefore, a pair of words whose earlier forms are distinct, yet similar, as far back as they have been traced, could in theory have come from a common root in an even earlier language, making them real cognates. The further back in time language reconstruction efforts go, however, the less confidence there can be in the outcome. Attempts at such reconstructions typically rely on just such pairings of superficially similar words, but the connections proposed by these theories tend to be conjectural, failing to document significant patterns of linguistic change. Under the disputed Nostratic theory and similar theories such as that of monogenesis, some of these examples would indeed be distantly related cognates, but the evidence for reclassifying them as such is insufficient. (Alternatively, apparent cognates in Eurasian language families far removed from each other could also be early loanwords, compare Wanderwort.) The Nostratic hypothesis is however based on the comparative method, unlike some other superfamily hypotheses.
There might be a slight risk of controversy, here, but I have removed the preceding section, which comes across as the result of an edit war between editors who disagreed about controversial hypotheses in historical linguistics. Controversies in historical linguistics are interesting, but this doesn't seem the right article for discussing them. Removing the silliness, all this passage is really saying is, "There can sometimes be disagreement over whether or not a pair of words really are false cognates," and that seems too obvious to even mention. However, if real controversies over supposed cognates have taken place in the literature of linguistics, it would be good to discuss them in the article. - Oliver P. (talk) 01:31, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed section on controversial hypotheses in historical linguistics 

message: The article claims these to be false cognates, because they do not derive from the same Proto-Germanic root. Is that really enough? How do we know they don't derive from the same PIE root? – SmiddleTC@ 13:15, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this is a bad example: su and sugu have the same ancestor. Garik (talk) 13:56, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: They're different words even on the Proto-Indo-European level, so it's not a bad example. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:31, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sau/sow 

message: In many Bantu languages, e.g. Kikuyu "koma" means "to sleep". Is this a false cognate with old Greek "koma"?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.223.164.85 (talk) 23:55, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably. Given the discussion sections above though, a more relevant question would however be "is this original research?" --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:18, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  koma 

message: Considering what Garik said above, how much of the list is actually possible to source? Are we ever going to find academics or other reputable sources saying 'yes, this and this are false cognates' or 'these words are thought to have the same origin, but do not'? Like, I always thought 'sole' and 'soul' had similar origins, but that's not the case. How can I establish that many people also think that way, enough for the reference to such a thing be notable? I can't without a good source. It's undue weight and original research otherwise, which of course, we've said over and over in these last few topics. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 21:23, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: False cognates are unrelated words with similar forms and meanings. To show that words are unrelated, cite their etymologies, as I have done in a few entries such as that for Dutch maar and Italian ma that go back to Wiktionary's PIE appendix. The original research issue I'll take up elsewhere. --Damian Yerrick (talk) 00:27, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example list viability? 

message: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1326/1/fulltext.pdf
This is used as the ref. for about five different words, but is an entire chapter from a book photocopied. The article's reference has no notation as to where the contextual material can be found. The source itself contains various notes in pencil, but doesn't say who the notes are from as far as I can tell. That's quite problematic if any of these pencil notes are being used as authoritative material. I don't know if that's the case, though. I'm not sure what tag to use for when an article's reference needs additional notation. If anyone knows this material, please add on what page and paragraph the contextual information occurs for each instance the source is used. If this material can be found in a more internet accessible format, please link it. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 21:36, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The Archi words appear on p. 260 (p. 20 by the pdf's internal numbering). No etymological discussion is attached though; so yes, this seems like a case of confused sourcing, if not original research in disguise altogether. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:59, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Specific source needs work

message: I was really confused by the claim that pretend is a false friend of prétendre. I'm a native French speaker in Canada and when I hear the word "prétendre", the first meaning I think of is "to claim as if something is true when it is not true". There is no other word to convey that meaning in French as far as I know. 
This is also the main meaning of "pretend". Are words really false friends when they have the same principal meaning but also have other meanings? This is very different from "library" (bibliothèque) and "librairie" (bookstore), for example. It's very frequent for cognates in French and English to essentially have the same meaning but to also have nuances in their meaning depending on the context; I doubt we can claim that all these words are "false friends". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.212.252.210 (talk • contribs) 
:The difference is that, in European French, "prétendre" means to make a claim, whether true or false. English still has that meaning when we speak of pretenders to the throne, and in the word "pretension". But the normal English meaning of "pretend" would be rendered in French by "feindre".
:I don't know about Canadian usage. It could well be influenced by English: just as in Italy "fattoria" is a farm but in American Italian it is a factory. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 10:16, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anyone have a source?--IronMaidenRocks (talk) 07:40, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pretend, a false friend of prétendre? 

message: Per tag from January, I've deleted the unsourced/unchallenged examples. Please find sources if you wish to add content to the article. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 07:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: You appear to have overshot and deleted also all but one of the about a dozen of what seem like reliably sourced examples, though. Mistakes can happen I'm sure; but if you had any concerns about these cases similar to the Archi ones, please actually bring them up too. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:55, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: One of the sources just says 'Oxford dictionary'. That's not really acceptable. Some of these sources need the ISBN codes, attempts to link them to online material, etc. I was hasty in deleting some of these, but so many of the sources were just abstract notes, my frustration got the better of me. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 04:52, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Deleted examples

message: Booth "day", "dia", etc., derive from "dyau"--MiguelMadeira (talk) 16:32, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Day" 

message: Numerous word pairs in the Examples section are going to have to come out, even some of those having two citations. This is because they violate the core principle of no original research.  WP:SYNTH says:  
An example of this is the following:
• Tagalog aku and Latin ego
Note that neither of the two references say anything about the word pair being false cognates; they merely list the definition of each one.  (It's even worse than that in this example, as the references point to Wiktionary, and Wiktionary is not a reliable source.)  In fact, the only "source" for this being a false cognate pair, is the editor who decided they sounded alike, believed they were false cognates, and listed them here, relying on two definitions from two different sources to support that decision. That is a textbook example of synthesis, and is prohibited.
Any word pair in the list that has a reference that does not say anything about the pair being false cognates is not verified by that source, and may be challenged or removed.  Any word pair having two references, where each reference is merely a definition of one of the two terms, is WP:SYNTH and may be challenged and removed.  Putting it another way:  it's not the job of editors to find words in different dictionaries (or different parts of the same dictionary) that have different etymological derivations, and then list them here when the dictionary or other source never mentioned the pair as false cognates; that's the very definition of original research.  Instead, find one source that lists both words as false cognates of each other, and cite it. Mathglot (talk) 01:44, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  No synthesis of published material 

message: Would the fact that "mama" for "mother" has popped up independently in many languages mean that the "mama" words in the different languages are false cognates? The reason for this is not coincidental, but because the /m/ sound is easy for small children to pronounce. /b/, /p/, /d/ and /t/ are too, which is why words for "father" starting with those sounds are common in languages. 2600:1700:E660:9D60:907A:B04A:159B:F587 (talk) 16:41, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Although it's a fascinating topic, it's not for us, as Wikipedia editors, to speculate on such things. Just follow verifiability policy, namely: if a reliable source says they are false cognates, then you can add the word group, citing that source. Mathglot (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "mama" for "mother" 

message: I'm challenging the source Mozeson (2000) as WP:FRINGE; any claims in the article sourced *only* to this book need to be removed.  Mozeson has completely abdicated any tools of linguistic analysis, and bases his conclusions about language and word origins on the Bible.  Here is Mozeson from the Foreword:Put away your dictionarieswith their charming old-fashioned myths of standardized spelling and pronounciation, with their superstitious, tribal need to create a new language ("Indo-European") out of ignorance of the ancient one. Take out instead, your Bibleand a pair of human ears. ... I began from the Biblical given that Hebrew is the Mother tongue (Genesis, chapter 11). ... More English words can be clearly linked to Hebrew, than to Latin, Greek, or French.
This is the fringe of the fringe; he's in cloud-cuckoo land. As an example: on page 66, he gives the origin of the English word Each as coming from Hebrew Ekh-ud (Genesis 1:5), Earth as coming from Hebrew Eretz (Genesis 1:1), Egret as coming from Hebrew Ug-oor (Isaiah 38:14). Standard dictionaries source these words to proto-Indo-European roots: līk-, er-3, and ker-2). 
Per the guideline at WP:FRINGE, no assertions of fact by Mozeson should be reported in this article, and he should be considered unreliable for any claims about language. Mathglot (talk) 18:06, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unreliable sources 

message: Day and diary are claimed not to be related, because they are derived from different PIE roots, one meaning 'to burn', the other meaning 'heaven'. Semantically it's not a problem, we could say, since in Hungarian the word ég has these two meanings: 'to burn', and 'sky'. Another coincidence, that it is claimed by linguists to be a coincidental homonymy of two words of different origins.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Istenaldja (talk • contribs) 01:59, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notice to the "day - diary" example 

message: Those words have similar pronunciation and have the same meaning "and", but I'm sure they have a different origin, hence those words can be categorized as false cognate as well.Ekirahardian (talk) 18:11, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic و (wa) and Vietnamese và 

message: I'd only keep those examples where a non-expert might reasonably suspect cognate status.
* "ask" in Jaqaru (South America) and English - no reasonable connection
* "to be" in Gbaya (Africa) and English - a very basic word, so unlikely to be borrowed in colonial period. Also not very interesting (a very short word).
* "dung" in English and Korean, "eye" in Greek and Malay - same
* English "sheriff", Arabic "sharif" - meanings not very close
Some examples that should be kept:
* "bad" in Persian and English - both Indo-European
* "dog" in Mbabaram (Australia) and English - one might suspect colonial borrowing; also kind of a famous example
User38453838 (talk) 10:13, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed the above entries and a few more per WP:BOLD. Removed English tiny / Yana (California) tʼinii (thin space), since the meanings aren't that close. Kept Inuktitut kayak / Turkish kayik, since the first is an international word. User38453838 (talk) 10:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: You're missing the point I fear: a false cognate is not defined to be a word that might be suspected to be cognate. Any word pair that shows accidental resemblance qualifies. The point of examples like English / Jaqaru is to illustrate that coincidences can happen (which is a surprizingly hard sell to some people). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:13, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

text:  I get the point, but the ones I removed were either really short words (I guess there is a false cognate in some language for nearly every simple monosyllabic word (e.g CVC, CV, VC), especially if some sound alternation is allowed), or either the meanings or the pronunciations were not that close. There are a lot more "dramatic" false cognates, such that some I added, and they'd get lost among the less interesting ones. User38453838 (talk) 08:34, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

text: Yes, that sounds like a reasonable condition for inclusion in this article. But it isn't a sufficient condition. The other one, is that a reliable source documents the fact that the words are false cognates. 
There is a SYNTH trap lying in wait here, whereby an eager and well-meaning editor finds two words that any reasonable person would agree look alike, then finds the words in two dictionaries (or other reliable sources) as having unrelated origins, and adds the word pair here, including citations to the two sources. This fails WP:SYNTH and must be removed. The reason is, that the editor is substituting their own judgment about what is a false cognate, over a statement in some published source that says that they are; the editor merely deduces that the words are false cognates, based on material they combined from two different sources, where neither one of the sources listed both together and claimed that they are false cognates.  This is the very definition of WP:SYNTH, which is a type of original reasearch.
As you make additions to the article, please ensure that your source lists both words, and identifies them as false cognates. Having two different sources that identify the origin of just one of the words each, is not sufficient. Mathglot (talk) 11:18, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  From an inclusionist perspective, I myself would allow very explicit examples in languages that have been in contact and have many cognates otherwise to be cited just by two dictionary entries. But I understand the synthesis argument too, and WP:NOT probably has an appropriate entry.  Would be nice to have a page for a list of false cognates on some other wiki. User38453838 (talk) 07:40, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: An interesting discourse, but entirely unsourced: 
The striking cross-linguistical similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition.  According to , these words are the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies; and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby-talk lexicon. Thus, there is no need to ascribe the similarities to common ancestry. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that these terms are built up from speech sounds that are easy to produce (nasals like  or , typically for "mother" words, or plosives like , , , , typically for "father" words, along with the low vowel ). However, variants occur; for example, in Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was papa, and in Slavic languages, baba is a common nickname for "grandmother", as in Baba Yaga and babushka. In Georgian, the usual pattern (nasal for "mother", plosive for "father") is inverted: the word for "father" is mama, and the word for "mother" is deda.
Preserving here, as a starting point for finding references, or modifying it, as appropriate. Mathglot (talk) 22:31, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mama and papa 

message: The title should be “False cognates” (in the plural form). Compare it with “False friends”. SuzieMillen (talk) 12:47, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The title should be “False cognates” 

message: Can somebody please add English "name" & Japanese "namae"? I would but I'm not familiar with Wikipedia editing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.174.201 (talk) 13:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japanese "namae" 

message: There is a mistake in this bibliographical reference:
de la Fuente, José Andrés Alonso (2010). "Urban legends: Turkish kayık 'boat' | "Eskimo" Qayaq 'Kayak'" (PDF). Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis. Retrieved 2015-03-06.
The author's given names are Jose Andres (I've omitted the diacritics) and Alonso is part of his family name: Alonso de la Fuente.S. Valkemirer (talk) 13:22, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mistake in a bibliographical reference 

message: There are some more word pairs that I think are false cognates, such as Vietnamese mới (From Proto-Vietic *ɓəːjʔ) and Thai ใหม่ (From Proto-Tai *ʰmɤːlᴮ), both mean "new" in English. Do you think that these two words are considered false cognates?
Quang, Bùi Huy (talk) 13:36, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: They may be, but if you add them to the article without providing a valid source, that would be original research and someone could delete them. This happened to myself a while ago. -  Munmula (talk), second account of  Alumnum 08:48, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

text: Do Gwen and Quang have similar meanings?  Kinship would be farfetched.  Gwen is a shortening of various Welsh names. —Tamfang (talk) 02:52, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this a false cognate? 

message: Are these two false cognates? For practically my entire life I've believed that scholar was derived from the word school, but it turns out they have wildly different etymologies (School is Germanic, Scholar is Greek, and ultimately come from a different PIE root). Do you think they are similar enough to be considered false cognates? 218.214.92.142 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 09:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not about whether we think they're similar enough. It's whether a published book or academic article thinks they are similar enough. When you find one that does, write up a citation to the source you found, and include it with your edit. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:30, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

text: They both go back to Latin schola (ultimately from Ancient Greek σχολή skholḗ), so I don't know what you're talking about. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:10, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  School and Scholar 

message: In English, the word 'meal' can refer to the flour of some grain, mainly wheat. In Korean, the word '밀'/mil/ means wheat. 𝒞𝒽ℯℯ𝓈ℯ𝒹ℴℊ (talk) 11:53, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  English 'meal' and Korean '밀'(mil)