False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

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GrandPiano
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by GrandPiano »

Imralu wrote:
GrandPiano wrote::chn: Middle Chinese 一 */ʔit̚/ "one" - :sle: Mende ita "one"
I think that's more for the false cognates thread. It doesn't really look like a false friend ... more like just a friend.
Whoops, yeah, that is a false cognate.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Znex »

:irl: Old Irish stán "tin" vs. :eng: Old English stān "stone, rock"
:eng: : [tick] | :grc: : [:|] | :chn: :isr: :wls: : [:S] | :deu: :ell: :rus: : [:x]
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by GrandPiano »

:esp: ir "to go" - :jpn: 行く iku "to go", いる iru "(of animate objects) to be; to exist"

Because I learned Spanish first, and because of the phonetic similarity of 行く and いる, for a while I kept wanting to think that いる meant "to go".
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by qwed117 »

:chn: Tsat: ma11 'father' vs. :eng: mom
Acehnese: abuwa 'aunt' or 'uncle' vs. :esp: abuela 'grandmother'
Acehnese: urʌt 'vine' vs :eng: "root"
:eng: "bovine" vs Proto-Chamic *bɔh 'calvesof the leg'

Looks like England skipped leg day...
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All4Ɇn
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by All4Ɇn »

:ita: cieco "blind" and ceco "czech"
Both sound exactly the same in all 4 adjective forms as well as their nominalizations
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Vlürch »

Noshi187 wrote:
GrandPiano wrote:which many English speakers hear as "n***er".
Similar thing happens in Korean. The informal subject forms of "I" and "you" are 내가 (naega) and 네가 (nega). Normally these would be pronounced exactly the same, so the second is pronounced 니가 (niga). Rather unfortunate...
Personally, I think the most hilarious false friend to the N-word is found in Uyghur: :uig: nigar - "beloved". The best example of this that I know and could imagine to exist is this way too catchy song by Molutzhan Tohtahunov. I wonder what would happen if someone drove around the blackest parts of America blasting it loud as fuck in their car with the windows open and accentuated the "nigar" parts by singing along; would people think they were being called niggers, or would they not care because the song is obviously not in English? Well, anyway, that song makes me grin like an idiot every time. [:D] And as such, I finally went ahead just now and commented on that video, liked it and sent him a friend request. Hopefully, he won't interpret "my nigga :DDDD" as offensive. Another thing I can't get over is how it sounds more like Kazakh at times; I guess that could be because he lives in Kazakhstan, or maybe it's just in my head? Anyone have any idea?

Speaking of Uyghur, at least according to Wikipedia, the English pronunciation of "Uyghur" is almost identical to "wigger". Okay, the first vowel is different, but still; if I heard someone say /wiːɡərz/ without context, I'd think they were saying "wiggers"... as do many other people, evidently, if you google "Uyghurs" and "wiggers" in quotes. [:P]
Znex wrote::irl: Old Irish stán "tin" vs. :eng: Old English stān "stone, rock"
:irn: ستان (-(e)stân) - place (suffix)

...which could be, (but I'm not sure if it is because my understanding of Persian is limited to vocabulary and very simple grammar, so I can't make sense of the Google results (and Google Translate isn't useful at all)), attached to the name of Ali to be used to refer to to any place inhabited by Shia Muslims: علیستان, which would be a false friend with :fin: alistan - "I make (someone) submit" or "I oppress", although pronounced very differently; just in writing, they'd be similar if the Persian term was romanised as Alistan. I kinda wish there'd be a place with that name just for the false friend, but I doubt it.
GrandPiano wrote: :jpn: 行く iku "to go"
Also "to cum", which you'll hear a thousand times if you watch Japanese porn. "AHH, IKU!!! IKU!!! [:$] "
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by clawgrip »

Cantonese has the same problem with "your"你嘅 nei5 ge3. When spoken it definitely sounds like this, because I noticed it in speech even before I knew what it meant.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Iyionaku »

:eng: to be on the same page
:deu: auf derselben Seite sein

The German idiom, although literally the same as the English one, actually means "to be allied".
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Ear of the Sphinx »

All4Ɇn wrote::ita: cieco "blind" and ceco "czech"
Both sound exactly the same in all 4 adjective forms as well as their nominalizations
I thought the former would have an extra onglide.
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All4Ɇn
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by All4Ɇn »

Ear of the Sphinx wrote:I thought the former would have an extra onglide.
<cie> and <scie> are typically pronounced /tʃɛ/ and /ʃɛ/. The only exceptions I can think of right now are some forms of the verb sciare.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Znex »

:wls: cau "to close, shut" vs. :chn: / kāi "to open"

These both sound very nearly the same, but are the complete opposite in meaning.
:eng: : [tick] | :grc: : [:|] | :chn: :isr: :wls: : [:S] | :deu: :ell: :rus: : [:x]
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by DesEsseintes »

clawgrip wrote:Cantonese has the same problem with "your"你嘅 nei5 ge3. When spoken it definitely sounds like this, because I noticed it in speech even before I knew what it meant.
Interesting.

I normally hear this pronounced 你嘅 lei5 ge3 due to HK "lazy sound", so I never picked up on this. Did you hear it pronounced with an [n] in Hong Kong or somewhere else?
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by clawgrip »

There is the slight chance that I heard a different words, but I heard it in Canada from bilingual English/Cantonese speakers.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

^I remember a friend of mine laughing to no end at his Chinese girlfriend saying something that sounded like "nigga" (he would also imitate it, playfully making fun of her). He claimed she said it a lot in phone conversations with relatives. I'll have to ask what the actual phrase was.
Znex wrote::chn: / kāi "to open"
Reminds me I need to make a collection of "kai" words :mrgreen:
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Ashtăr Balynestjăr »

那个 nèige ‘that one’, which is commonly used as a filler word.

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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Lao Kou »

Ashtâr Balînestyâr wrote:那个 nèige ‘that one’, which is commonly used as a filler word.
About a year and a half ago on this very thread, I questioned whether many people actually heard these words this way, and was told that yes, they do. Well, so be it.

Within the past few months, I've heard Neger on the German channel and nègre on the French channel, and viscerally felt that distress one feels when the n-word is invoked, because, well, these words are actually linked to the n-word, and are a part of that word's disturbing history (though I'm really not sure if they're as connotatively and emotionally charged in these languages as the n-word is in English -- native speakers can weigh in). And I can certainly understand that if you told an African-American waitron at Denny's not to be niggardly with the coffee or s/he might be getting a niggardly tip, you'd get some etymologically misunderstood but justifiable push-back.

But I still don't hear these others. 你嘅 nei5 ge3 (lazy or highfalutin pronunciation), 那个 nèige (to my ear, these don't sound similar to the n-word at all), 내가 (naega) and 네가 (nega) (I don't speak Korean). Apparently, others do. But are we so sensitized that every /[n]V[g]V/ sequence is going to take us there? 呢個 (Cantonese: ni1 go3), 日課 (Japanese: nikka), 苦手 (Japanese: nigate)?

Nougat? Nugget? Fluffernutter?
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by clawgrip »

苦っ!
niga!
(This is) bitter!
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by GrandPiano »

Lao Kou wrote:But I still don't hear these others. 你嘅 nei5 ge3 (lazy or highfalutin pronunciation), 那个 nèige (to my ear, these don't sound similar to the n-word at all), 내가 (naega) and 네가 (nega) (I don't speak Korean). Apparently, others do. But are we so sensitized that every /[n]V[g]V/ sequence is going to take us there? 呢個 (Cantonese: ni1 go3), 日課 (Japanese: nikka), 苦手 (Japanese: nigate)?

Nougat? Nugget? Fluffernutter?
I think part of it comes from the fact that [e], [ej], and similar phones are phonetically close to [ɪ]. So it's not just any [nVgV] sequence, it's any [nVgV] sequence with vowels phonetically similar to those of the n-word.
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Shemtov »

Lao Kou wrote:
Ashtâr Balînestyâr wrote:那个 nèige ‘that one’, which is commonly used as a filler word.
About a year and a half ago on this very thread, I questioned whether many people actually heard these words this way, and was told that yes, they do. Well, so be it.

Within the past few months, I've heard Neger on the German channel and nègre on the French channel, and viscerally felt that distress one feels when the n-word is invoked, because, well, these words are actually linked to the n-word, and are a part of that word's disturbing history (though I'm really not sure if they're as connotatively and emotionally charged in these languages as the n-word is in English -- native speakers can weigh in). And I can certainly understand that if you told an African-American waitron at Denny's not to be niggardly with the coffee or s/he might be getting a niggardly tip, you'd get some etymologically misunderstood but justifiable push-back.

But I still don't hear these others. 你嘅 nei5 ge3 (lazy or highfalutin pronunciation), 那个 nèige (to my ear, these don't sound similar to the n-word at all), 내가 (naega) and 네가 (nega) (I don't speak Korean). Apparently, others do. But are we so sensitized that every /[n]V[g]V/ sequence is going to take us there? 呢個 (Cantonese: ni1 go3), 日課 (Japanese: nikka), 苦手 (Japanese: nigate)?

Nougat? Nugget? Fluffernutter?
As I've said we can add the Hebrew/Yiddish/Judeo-English word "Niggun" commonly pronounced as [nɪgn̩] to the list. All it is is a style of folktune commonly associated with Chassidim. Can we not associate it with the N-word, please?
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Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Post by Shemtov »

:eng: Doctor Who :ind: Hindi /ɖakʈar hũ/ "I am a doctor"
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