False cognates

[Imralu]

* Georgian კაკაბი [kʼakʼabi] "patridge"
* Maori kākāpō [kaːkaːpɔː] "kakapo"
both words are used to indicate types of birds, though different types

As far as I can tell, these are derived from the birdcalls via onomatopoeia, so it may not be too surprising.

Yes, kākā in Māori is almost certainly onomatopoeic. Pō means "night", so it's basically "night parrot", which is the name of a very, very rare parrot in Australia, which is not closely related to the kākāpō at all, but weirdly has a very similar plumage pattern.

There is the kākā (Nestor meridionalis) and that is also the generic word for "parrot", and a couple of other kinds of parrots have their names from it, such as the kākāpō, Strigops habroptilus, kākāriki "little kākā", which either means the yellow-crowned parakeet, Cyanoramphus auriceps or the red-crowned parakeet, Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae, and also means "green" and from there has also become the name of some kinds of geckos. The only parrot in Aotearoa whose name is not derived from kākā is the kea, Nestor notabilis, which is more closely related to the kākā than all the kinds that are named from it. It's very common though, so that accounts for why it gets its own name.

[Sequor]

English juice, French jus 'juice' < Latin iūs 'gravy, sauce, broth'
Spanish jugo 'juice' < Old Spanish xugo < Latin sūcus 'juice'

[VaptuantaDoi]

English juice, French jus 'juice' < Latin iūs 'gravy, sauce, broth'
Spanish jugo 'juice' < Old Spanish xugo < Latin sūcus 'juice'

Ooh, that's a good one. Reminds me of another Romance one:

French y "there" < HĪC
Old Spanish ý "there" < IBĪ

[Visions1]

* Georgian კაკაბი [kʼakʼabi] "patridge"
* Maori kākāpō [kaːkaːpɔː] "kakapo"
both words are used to indicate types of birds, though different types

As far as I can tell, these are derived from the birdcalls via onomatopoeia, so it may not be too surprising.

Yes, kākā in Māori is almost certainly onomatopoeic. Pō means "night", so it's basically "night parrot", which is the name of a very, very rare parrot in Australia, which is not closely related to the kākāpō at all, but weirdly has a very similar plumage pattern.

There is the kākā (Nestor meridionalis) and that is also the generic word for "parrot", and a couple of other kinds of parrots have their names from it, such as the kākāpō, Strigops habroptilus, kākāriki "little kākā", which either means the yellow-crowned parakeet, Cyanoramphus auriceps or the red-crowned parakeet, Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae, and also means "green" and from there has also become the name of some kinds of geckos. The only parrot in Aotearoa whose name is not derived from kākā is the kea, Nestor notabilis, which is more closely related to the kākā than all the kinds that are named from it. It's very common though, so that accounts for why it gets its own name.

The word for cuckoo in most languages seems to be based off their calls, or diachronically descended from that (e.g. Lithuanian vs. Latvian). But I haven't found much info on what Amerind languages call them.

[Imralu]

The word for cuckoo in most languages seems to be based off their calls, or diachronically descended from that (e.g. Lithuanian vs. Latvian). But I haven't found much info on what Amerind languages call them.

It's weird speaking a European language in a country with very different wildlife. The only common cuckoos that I regularly hear here are

The Pacific koel (Also called rainbird. "Koel" is onomatopoeic after the first type of call that you hear in this recording, which is a typical summer sound here, but they make lots of other calls.)

The channel-billed cuckoo (Not sure how you onomatopoeise that. It just sounds like something you'd expect to hear in jurassic park. That urban legend about duck's quacks not echoing seems to apply the opposite way to these. Every time I hear them, they echo and reverberate more than any other bird's call. That high pitched clicking you can hear that gets louder at about 30 seconds is the echolocation of white-striped free-tailed bats.

We have an owl here that has a call very similar to the Eurasian cuckoo and its name in English is "boobook" (/ˈbuːbʊk/with the exact opposite sequence of vowels as "cuckoo" /ˈkʊkuː/ ... another name for it is the morepork). You could hear it a bit in the background of the previous video, but here's one for it alone: boobook" (At 40 seconds you can hear the the white striped free-tailed bat again.)

... so, boobook is kind of a false cognate of cuckoo, just because it's not the same bird or a related bird making the call, but a bird that independently evolved a similar call.

Another odd thing about having a language from an entirely different biome is stuff like "ribbit". There are no frogs that sound anything like that here, just "gronk gronk gronk", "reeeeeeeeee", "wark" and "ree-kit-kit" ... some that just make a loud toneless pop, and one with the best onomatopoeic name of anything ever: the scarlet-sided pobblebonk (also called the northern banjo frog).

Another one is that I just grew up knowing all the names of trees that don't grow here, like "oak", "larch", "elm", "maple", "poplar", "willow", "juniper", "fir", "pine", "spruce", "beech". Some of these have been reused for the names of things here. We've got a few things called pines that are conifers, but not particularly closely related to northern hemisphere species and some things called XXXXX cedar, etc., but our most common street trees are various figs, various palms, jacarandas, poincianas, Queensland kauri (more closely related to our "pines" than northern hemisphere pines are), silky oak (not an oak!), leopard tree, blue quandong, flame tree, blueberry ash (not an ash!). When I moved to Germany, I didn't know any of the trees and occasionally someone told me and I was like "Ah, that's what a [tree whose name I knew in both English and German] looks like!" and I could never remember them. Like, when learning German, I just committed to memory "Fichte = spruce ... whatever the fuck a spruce is!"

Anyway, I don't know if there are any cuckoos with particularly distinctive calls in the Americas, but if they don't have the common kind found in Afro-Eurasia that makes the eponymous call, native words for them are likely nothing like "cuckoo".

[Salmoneus]

Another odd thing about having a language from an entirely different biome is stuff like "ribbit". There are no frogs that sound anything like that here, just "gronk gronk gronk", "reeeeeeeeee", "wark" and "ree-kit-kit" ... some that just make a loud toneless pop, and one with the best onomatopoeic name of anything ever: the scarlet-sided pobblebonk (also called the northern banjo frog).

To be fair, these onomatopoeias (really want to write 'onomatopoeiae' there, just for the extra vowel...) vary massively even between neighbouring languages. The sound of things like frogs is hugely subjective, given that they're made in a totally non-human way. "Ribbit" is kind of like "ticktock" - a sound your brain imposes on the sound, rather than something present in the sound, even though once you're used to the idea of frogs making that sound it's hard to hear anything else.

Frogs go "ribbit" in England, but in Germany apparently they say "quak-quak" (the same sound as a duck), and in Hungary they say "brekeke". Speaking of ducks, apparently Danish ones go "raprap", while Danish horses go "vrinsk". Germans and Spanish believe that cockerels begin and end their crowing with high front vowels!

Meanwhile, everyone agrees cows go something like "moo", but they usen't to - English cows used to go "low", which is why mooing is still known as "lowing" in archaising texts.

Another one is that I just grew up knowing all the names of trees that don't grow here, like "oak", "larch", "elm", "maple", "poplar", "willow", "juniper", "fir", "pine", "spruce", "beech". Some of these have been reused for the names of things here. We've got a few things called pines that are conifers, but not particularly closely related to northern hemisphere species and some things called XXXXX cedar, etc., but our most common street trees are various figs, various palms, jacarandas, poincianas, Queensland kauri (more closely related to our "pines" than northern hemisphere pines are), silky oak (not an oak!), leopard tree, blue quandong, flame tree, blueberry ash (not an ash!). When I moved to Germany, I didn't know any of the trees and occasionally someone told me and I was like "Ah, that's what a [tree whose name I knew in both English and German] looks like!" and I could never remember them. Like, when learning German, I just committed to memory "Fichte = spruce ... whatever the fuck a spruce is!"

Anyway, I don't know if there are any cuckoos with particularly distinctive calls in the Americas, but if they don't have the common kind found in Afro-Eurasia that makes the eponymous call, native words for them are likely nothing like "cuckoo".

To be fair, 99% of people have no idea what any of those English trees look like anyway. Other than willows, obviously, but even then most people would only recognise a Chinese willow, not a European one. Even I have no idea what a spruce is exactly, except that (from the context of its softwood, its scent, and the location of spruce forests) I believe it's a conifer of some sort.

[I could recognise a distinctive large English oak, probably, but not with a huge amount of confidence. Definitely not some of the weirder oaks varieties we have. I could guess a larch by its colour, if it was larch-coloured (but might guess other things that colour were larches too). I have almost no idea what an elm is, partly because conventional elms are virtually extinct here now and only weird mutant and engineered elms still exist; from the context of art and literature I have very vague sense of the shape of idealised Roman elms, but don't know the details. Maples are large or boring acers - I automatically guess anything with a sharply palmate leaf is either an acer (if small or red) or a maple (if big and not red), but where sycamores fit in I've no idea. Poplars I know are tall, but I don't really know about them; when I was young I used to think cypresses were poplars. I believe trees near French roads are often poplars, and poplars sometimes have clumps in in their branches. I can now have a stab at a goat willow because there's one near my house that I looked up, but if it's an osier I've got no chance. Junipers... I think I'd guess that something was a juniper if it looked like a yew but wasn't. (obviously I can recognise a yew, everyone knows what a yew is like... at least, a conventional English yew, Irish yews can be different). Firs, pines, spruces and cedars are conifers; buggered if I know the difference. Except that if it's very dense I think it might be a fir? But some things that aren't dense are also firs. Beeches are just trees with no distinguishing features - you can spot them in autumn, though, because they retain their brown leaves, I think. Copper beeches are copper, so they're easy. I used to get beeches confused with birches, but now I reason that anything with laterally-peeling bark is a birch, if it's not something exotic and australian.

Others you missed are birch (the bark), cherry (flowers?), apple (late-flowering cherry?), magnolia (grandiflora (leaves, flowers) and solangeana/stellata (no leaves, flowers)), plane (non-laterally peeling bark, but only unambiguous with young urban trees), lime (no idea), holly (obvious), hornbeam (SOME hornbeams have a distinctively muscular appearance, but not all), blackthorn (sodomy non sapiens) and hawthorn (dirt cherry flowers)... and although it's not native there's quite a bit of escaped sumac around here too, which is very distinctive. Oh, and horse and sweet chestnuts (but actually looking it up apparently sycamores and limes have similar-looking fruit!). And hazel (can be distinctive in habit).

I don't know any of your trees, except palms. And I've heard things called "flame trees", but I think that refers to a lot of different plants.]

It's not even a recent thing, though. "Sycamore" refers to at least three different European trees that are unrelated and have nothing in common - one's a fig, one's a plane, and one's an acer! Likewise, the things we call lime trees aren't anything like the trees we get lime fruit from!

[Khemehekis]

I can identify an oak, a maple (asteroidal leaves!), a willow, a pine, and a palm at sight -- the five tree words I selected for the CBBMLLFPD -- and understand that "Norway spruce" refers to Christmas trees. "Beech" isn't a word North Americans use frequently in the twenty-first century, though. I don't hear the word "poplar" in speech either -- guess it isn't very "pop'lar" in everyday conversation! (Even though there's a city in my county called Alamo, which is the Spanish word for poplar, so maybe we habe them here?) And isn't a juniper a bush? Those coniferous bushes with blue gin berries that are notorious cobwxb-gatherers?

As for Australian plants, I can identify a eucalyptus, because we have them in California, too (but not koalas!)

Also, check oot this thread on animal onomatopoeiae: https://cbbforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=4886

[Imralu]

(really want to write 'onomatopoeiae' there, just for the extra vowel...)

Let's do it!

vary massively even between neighbouring languages. The sound of things like frogs is hugely subjective, given that they're made in a totally non-human way. "Ribbit" is kind of like "ticktock" - a sound your brain imposes on the sound, rather than something present in the sound, even though once you're used to the idea of frogs making that sound it's hard to hear anything else.

Yeah, but ribbit makes a lot of sense for this particular frog sound. There's just nothing here that sounds anything like that. Some people say "knee deep" for that too, and that works too. Things like "quak" work very well for some of our frogs. There's a frog that was everywhere when I went camping once that sounds almost exactly like a person hiding in the bushes going [wɐ̃k̚]. I pointed that out to a friend and she was like "STOP IT!" I've never figured out what species it was. I'm also OK with "brekeke" (although obviously that breaks English phonotactics unless we're going to do something awful to that final <e>). Even if you only have frogs that speak in monosyllables, the combined sound of them in a pond can easily sound like brekeke. I've just always been aware that "ribbit" sounds like one particular frog "sound effect", not like a real frog that exists in my life.

I kept having these moments in Germany where I'd hear something that sounded like "sound effects". One time, walking in Berlin, near my home, which was near the river, I suddenly heard "harbour sound effects". It was a big kind of gull (I knew which one but I don't know now ... Larus sp.) flying directly above me, doing that classic "seagull" sound. These are the only gulls we have in Brisbane: very small, quite pretty gulls with gentle but harsh voices. Another time, I was in the forest near Berlin and I heard an "owl sound effect". The only owls we hear much in Brisbane are the boobooks I posted above, but they're not that common where I live. This is the most common thing that people erroneously think is an owl.

Bird books are always great for onomatopoeiaising bird calls and I've seen it written as "oom oom oom oom", which fits. The funniest one is the song of our magpies (in the woodswallow family, unrelated to the corvids called magpies on other continents), which I still remember one bird book I had describing it as "quardle-oodle-ardle-wardle-doodle". (The picture doesn't match the ones here as this is a white-backed magpie from the south, and we have black-backed magpies. The white patch on the neck doesn't extend to the back. They used to be described as separate species, but they're regarded as one species now. The call is basically identical.)

Danish horses go "vrinsk"

I was like "WTF?", but ... "neigh" doesn't really capture it either. I think the best is something like hihihihihi

This is so long now and completely off topic, so ... tree stuff:

Spoiler:

To be fair, 99% of people have no idea what any of those English trees look like anyway. Other than willows, obviously, but even then most people would only recognise a Chinese willow, not a European one. Even I have no idea what a spruce is exactly, except that (from the context of its softwood, its scent, and the location of spruce forests) I believe it's a conifer of some sort.

Yeah, but I'm the kind of person who would probably know those things.

I could recognise a distinctive large English oak, probably, but not with a huge amount of confidence.

I usually recognised them in Germany by first seeing the acorns and then observing that the leaves are "oak-leafed-creeping-fig-shaped"

I could guess a larch by its colour, if it was larch-coloured (but might guess other things that colour were larches too).

I have virtually no concept of a larch except for a Monty Python sketch. I also can't remember the German word. My brain keeps suggesting Lerche, which is a lark.

I have almost no idea what an elm is, partly because conventional elms are virtually extinct here now and only weird mutant and engineered elms still exist; from the context of art and literature I have very vague sense of the shape of idealised Roman elms, but don't know the details.

Yeah, all I know about elms is that they're often very sick with a disease that attacks them, that there was a nightmare on their street and that we have an invasive tree here called a Chinese elm (no idea if it's actually an elm or just called that ... I suspect the latter) which has quite distinctive leaves held on the same plane on a zigzagging stem.

Maples are large or boring acers - I automatically guess anything with a sharply palmate leaf is either an acer (if small or red) or a maple (if big and not red), but where sycamores fit in I've no idea.

I am a fan of maples for their syrup.The flame tree (Illawarra flame tree) is the only one around here that has that kind of leaf that I can think of. I'm evidently not the only one who thinks so: Brachychiton acerifolius. They can often be recognised by their trunk being green even when the tree is quite thick, although they sometimes turn brown too. Here's a flame tree in full bloom with a jacaranda in the background. Jacarandas are native to South America and a very popular street tree here. They are deciduous, but not to get through winter — basically just to make their flowers more visible. In October to November (late spring), they drop their leaves and cover themselves in purple flowers. From my apartment, I have quite a good view and I just see purple trees dotting all the suburbs I can see.

Poplars I know are tall, but I don't really know about them; when I was young I used to think cypresses were poplars.

Ah yes, those are actually two I can tell apart. There were some super tall poplars between the apartment buildings across the road from my place in Berlin. I've also seen them in New Zealand and Tasmania, but I think it must be too warm for them here, or they're just unpopular.

Firs, pines, spruces and cedars are conifers; buggered if I know the difference. Except that if it's very dense I think it might be a fir? But some things that aren't dense are also firs.

Around Berlin, there's a common conifer with a red trunk going up a few metres and then very sparse branches. Quite uninspiring. In winter, they're basically the only trees that have leaves, but they may as well not have leaves because the visual effect is about the same. In the mountains, though, there are some gorgeous, thick conifers that, where they grow densely, completely block out the sky.

Beeches are just trees with no distinguishing features - you can spot them in autumn, though, because they retain their brown leaves, I think.

We have something from the beech family, called beeches. From memory, Nothofagus, whereas Northern Hemisphere beeches are Fagus. They're found in temperate rainforests in the southern hemisphere (Aus, NZ, Chile, from memory) and a few hours drive south of here, in the rainforest, there's the northernmost stand of them, up in the mountains where it's a bit cooler and wetter. From memory, I think their leaves are quite distinctly corrugated.

I used to get beeches confused with birches, but now I reason that anything with laterally-peeling bark is a birch, if it's not something exotic and australian.

Yes, I forgot birches and planes. That was one that I learned to distinguish quite quickly because of the distinctive pale bark. I don't think they look like Australian trees, although we also have a lot of things with pale bark. Plane trees are really common in parks around Germany and their trunks look very Australian to me, almost like a eucalypt, except they have actual green leaves on top and not just greenish, brownish, greyish straps of jerky that hang down trying not to cast a shadow. And yeah, I didn't really include fruiting trees that we kind of know here. It's too warm to grow apples and cherries here, but we can get them from the south, and there's an apple growing area a few hours west of here, up in the mountains around Stanthorp ... the coldest part of Queensland, where it sometimes snows. I didn't really think of magnolias either because we can grow them here too and I don't think of them as "European forest trees" like the others because I think of them as being primarily from Asia and grown elsewhere as ornamentals, although I don't know how accurate that is. Limes are funny because it's a really stupid name ... and all I really know about them is that the famous street Unter den Linden in Berlin is named after them, but I wouldn't recognise one.

I also forgot to mention my favourite trees that I saw in Berlin: various kinds of chestnut. Edible chestnuts aren't particularly common and mostly distinctive to me because of their very semeny smell in springtime, but some of the ornamental chestnuts there are absolutely beautiful. And I don't know if it's sumac or tree of heaven, but there's quite a lot of that around Berlin too and, even though it's a weed, I find it quite nice.

[k1234567890y]

English soot and Korean 숯 [sʰut̚] ("charcoal, cremains, charred remains")

[Khemehekis]

Some statistics on tree words from the corpus COCA. "Palm" (#2,693), "oak" (#3,745), and "pine" (#4,012) all make the top 5,000 words in American English. "Maple" (#6,429) and "willow" (#7,341) aren't quite so common, but still make the top 10,000. "Birch" is #14,390. "Poplar" (#18,322) and "beech" (#19,164) are less common. "Eucalyptus" (#20,168) is outside the top 20,000 words -- apparently Americans outside California talk about beeches more often than they do eucalypti.

[k1234567890y]

Icelandic lag "layer, stratum, tune, song, order, thrust, stab, knack" v.s. Malay-Indonesian lagu "song"

And thanks for sharing Khemehekis!