Identical Words With Different Meanings

[@NameExplain]

What’s your favourite false cognate? And suggest a video for next Monday!

[@me0101001000]

In Mandarin, 炸鸡 (Zhà Jī) means 'fried chicken'. In Japanese, it's ジャージー (Jājī), but it means 'jersey'. But in Korean, 자지 (Jaji) is a slang term for penis.

[@nekokoishi]

In Filipino, Baka means Cow. In Japanese, Baka means Idiot.

[@kristophersurma6459]

I’d love to see you break down how loan words happen.

[@ishouldhavetried]

Please make a video about the origin or different car manufacturer model names... For example, Toyota. What is a Prius, where Tundra comes from, etc

[@Illumisepoolist]

Gift. Can you do nicknames for prison?

[@katieskarlette]

The embarrassed/embarazada one got my high school Spanish teacher in trouble when he was studying abroad in Spain and spilled something during supper with his host family. He didn't understand why everyone was laughing themselves to tears when he frantically grabbed napkins to clean it up while saying, "I'm very pregnant! I'm very pregnant!"

[@JeeWeeD]

The German word 'prägnant' and the Dutch word 'pregnant' also means something totally different from the English word...

[@Anonymous-df8it]

Also, the other way sounds bad as well. I could imagine a woman running up excitedly saying "I'm embarrassed", and a response of "You should be"

[@Imagino1234]

There's a false friend I've learned about in German that my prof told the class to be careful about: In English, we have "mist," a synonym for fog. In German, "Mist" is a swear word equivalent to "$#!t" in English.

[@Aureus07]

Mist is more similar to crap or damn rather than sh!t

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

Mist is like "crap", Scheiße is like "shit", Kacke is also like "shit" (or maybe between crap and shit). Scheiße is also an equivalent of the "fuck" swear (for the "fuck" adjective it'd be "ficken"). Scheißer is not the equivalent of "fucker" (that'd be "Wichser". Scheißer would probably just be seen as silly).

[@DasIllu]

Fun fact: In a Star Trek TNG episode where Dr. Crusher is alone on the ship looking at a grayish blue view screen on the bridge, she asks the board computer "What is that mist?" (or something close containing the word mist) In the german dub they just kept the word mist "Was ist das für ein Mist?" which roughly translates to "What is that crap?" It kinda made the episode feel a bit more alive since while Roddenberry was alive there was no cursing in any shape or form in TNG.

[@Liansuo_Lv]

Misty/Kazumi/Ondine never stood a chance in the German translation 😢

[@SiqueScarface]

And an American company in the 1950ies wondered, why their pin curler under the name "Mist Stick" never caught on in Germany, despite curled hair being the style of the decade (here we have a second false cognate: stick / Stück, the German word meaning piece, thus Miststück translates to piece of crap.) By the way, the Rolls-Royce Silver Mist also didn't sell in Germany. I wonder why.

[@raitoiro]

7:01 I'm pretty sure this one isn't actually a false cognate. Baskets were likely named as such in french because they were originally sold as shoes to play basketball. In French "basketball" is shorten to "basket" so the shoes would have been called "chaussures de basket" which was would then be shortened to just "baskets" and finally generalised to mean most sport shoes. In fact something similar probably happened with "tenis" which is mostly used to means the sport, but is also a less used synonym for basket (although the overlap isn't perfect). So the French "basket" probably has the same origin as the English "basket" since it comes from it.

[@CodyBrumfield1]

Revenge for “tennis shoes” being the name for all athletic shoes without cleats in (possibly regional American) English. You can call a pair of Jordan’s “tennis shoes” in America and no one will blink. But no one would say “basketball shoes” unless they meant shoes specifically for basketball. “Tennis shoes” is the broader category.

[@philipsutton5652]

I think this applies... I once hosted a German exchange student who smoked. I noticed the warning on the packet that read "Smokers Die Younger", & because he was German I assumed the smokes were too, I also recognised the word 'die' as the German word for 'the' so I asked him what it meant. I felt like right numpty when he pointed out it was an English pack 😂

[@whohan779]

I had that with Belgian/Dutch cigarettes, they read "roken is dodelijk" ("smoking is deadly"), which (at least imo) most closely resembles "rocken is(t) dödelig" ("rocking is stupid"). Also, when walking through Amsterdam around those years (I did only properly know German at the time and was part of a group) I spotted scaffolding with a banner reading "Steig huren?", which apparently meant "Rent (a) scaffolding?", but my German mind read it as "Huren besteigen?" or "Steig auf / Besteige Huren?" which means "Climbing whores?".

[@chelseawhite7117]

Learning Spanish and I get super distracted when learning words like “bigote” which is mustache, and “molesto” which is upset, or annoying 😳 I certainly won’t have trouble remembering them

[@anaisabelsantos4661]

Eng - constipation Pt - constipação (cold) Two completelly different medical conditions.

[@yaagodourado]

There's a funny between Portuguese and Japanese, but in this case they are the same word, the same meaning but totally different orign: "Né" It can be literally translated to "isn't?", and I'm both languages we use with the same propose, like "it's going to be a great idea, isn't?" But the origin is totally different from Portuguese and Japanese, so it's a brutal coincidence.

[@M-tl4xt]

It also exists in northern Italian

[@WindowsDrawer]

in polish we have "nie" for this, which also means "no": "Dobry pomysł, nie?"

[@asshole9191]

Same in Saxonian German. When I started to say ne in German as well, my family thought I started to speak Saxonian

[@MoolsDogTwoOfficial]

My favourite loanword in Japanese is “Pan (Bread)” which is from old Portuguese.

[@ZarzenLetsPlay]

In German and Luxembourgish it‘s the same, I think many languages share that sound, even though, in Germanic languages it is a abbreviation for Ne(in)? as in isn‘t it?

[@mariusvr]

Portuguese is a language much closer to Spanish than to English, but Portuguese "embaraçada" has the same meaning that the English version and not at all the same as the Spanish one

[@greenrobot5]

also portuguese engraçado means funny and spanish engrasado means greasy

[@Demian_Garcia]

Apparently the reason is that the word embaraçar (both in portuguese and in spanish) originally meant "to hinder, annoy" and the meaning may have evolved into "to become pregnant" because pregnant women become "hindered" due to their pregnancy. Also, in spanish we do have the word "embarazoso" which does mean embarrassing

[@Aqweius]

I recall at the age of 16 having to explain to my mother and eldest brother that a certain toy my niece was playing with was in fact okay and not some plot by the toy company to harm children. We were in Quebec at the time and my niece was playing with a "super market" set complete with mini cheese wheel, bread, a couple of cans of food and an odd looking "bottle" that had a fish emblem one side and said "poison" on the other. By that point in life I had taken several years of French and explained that "poisson" (pwa-sone) was the world for fish in French and that clearly the manufacture of the tiny toy just didn't pay attention to spelling it correctly. As I said, there was an emblem of a fish on one side so I knew this was their intent but why they misspelled it or put it on a bottle mistified me.

[@3tggalgan]

My favourite example of false friends is the word jahoda/jagoda which in Czech and most other slavic languages means a strawberry, but in Polish the word jagoda for some reason means a blueberry. And another simmilair example is the words láska and łaska mean love in Czech and mercy in Polish but the words milost and miłość mean mercy in Czech and love in Polish ... they just swapped those two words 😁

[@modmaker7617]

Jagoda in Polish means berry in general and blueberry in Polish is actually borówka czarna

[@3tggalgan]

@@modmaker7617 Sorry about that, I am not fluent in Polish and I was kinda confused about that because I have heard Polish people use jagoda to refer to blueberries. However it's still not strawberry as in other slavic languages

[@modmaker7617]

​@@3tggalgan Yeah, in colloqual Polish jagoda means blueberry but technically not correct Standard Polish.

[@aralka01]

And it doesn't stop there, there are so many false friends between Czech and Polish! Like sklep = cellar//shop, čerstvý = fresh/czerstwy = stale ...and then there are the infamous ones 🤭

[@o_s-24]

In Russian ягода (yagoda) means just berry

[@Reichieru1]

Then there's the avocado. The French word for avocado is the same as their word for lawyer, which of course is similar to the English word advocate. So a few false cognates are from mangling loan words.

[@malegria9641]

Tbf our language has a ton of words that sound the same, and rely heavily on context.

[@jrr2480]

The Japanese word 何 (nani) mean 'what', while in English, a 'nanny' is a female servant who takes care of children.

[@yoshilovesyoshi]

This one made me laugh harder than I thought it would

[@1994CivicGLi]

there’s also 母 (haha) which means ‘mother’

[@williswameyo5737]

Surprisingly, very different from Japanese, in Swahili, nani means who the word is used in questions: example - Nani amefanya hivi? (Who has done this?)

[@williswameyo5737]

Nani is a false cognate, btn Swahili and Japanese In Swahili, that Nani means Who In Japanese, Nani means what

[@ellotheearthling]

I have never in my life thought of nannies when I saw that word

[@chofmann]

I find the case of the origin of laughing "hlaehhan" curious, because I can absolutely see it being related to the german "lachen". Drop the initial "h", make the "an" into an "en" and you are basically there.

[@greenrobot5]

the word itself looks like an onomatopoeia of laughter

[@benjaminprietop]

As a Spanish speaker, it's always funny to hear the word "bigot", since here "bigote" means moustache, so I always imagine someone with a big moustache when they say that word. Also, my dad once took an English course and one day a student entered the class saying: "my wife is embarrassed", meaning she was pregnant lol

[@davidbarton1928]

Fika in Swedish means a coffee break and a chat with friends. Fica in Italian is the feline slang term for the female genitalia. They are pronounced the same. Hence my former Sicilian mother-in-law's rather surprised reaction when my Swedish sister in law suggested we all went out for Fika. Swedish is a linguistic minefield for English speakers too. Bra means good, sex means six, slut means stop...

[@robertmiller9735]

I presume you meant it's a female slang term. One wonders what terms cats use for that...

[@JCCyC]

It Portuguese fica means "stays" or "please stay". Now let's get a Brazilian, a Swede, and an Italian in the same room.

[@williswameyo5737]

That is weird to as in Swahili, Fika is a verb that means to arrive

[@greenrobot5]

Not too long ago the word "bizarro" in spanish meant "brave" which is very different from the english "bizarre", however spanish youtubers started using the word the wrong way to mean "bizarre" and now it means the same as the english word.

[@sdspivey]

False cognates and false friends are not the same. False cognates have different etymologies that lead to words with similar spelling/pronunciation and meanings (like island and isle). False friends are words that have nothing to do with one another that have similar spelling/pronunciation (like Japanese and European name Naomi).

[@robertmiller9735]

Yes, "gymnasium" has a single etymological source.

[@gdzephyriac2766]

take the English word “bad” and the persian word “bad”, they mean the same and yet they’re false cognates

[@sdspivey]

@@gdzephyriac2766 The categories may have some overlap, but they are different areas of study for linguists and etymologists.

[@pierreabbat6157]

The two Naomis are false cognates (one is from Hebrew). False friends are similarly spelled or pronounced words with different meanings, like English "gift" and German "Gift", which are true cognates.

[@gdzephyriac2766]

@@pierreabbat6157 Throw in the Swedish “gift” and you have a trifecta

[@Ithirahad]

A false COGNATE is something that sounds similar, and perhaps has similar meaning, but comes from different origins. A false FRIEND in linguistics is something with similar sound, but different meaning. A false FRIEND can be a true COGNATE, if there's a common origin and the sound of the word stayed similar but the meanings branched out.

[@andressigalat602]

That's what I was going to say. In fact, most false friends are cognates that have shifted in meaning over time to end meaning different things in each language.

[@annaj2374]

There is a pair of false friends in German and English: the german word "tief" which sounds a bit like "thieve" and "Dieb" which sounds like "deep". "tief" translates to "deep" and "Dieb" to "thieve".

[@Philosina]

The german word for laugh is Lachen which actually sounds similar! I have never thought about the acoustic similarity between laufen and laugh

[@whohan779]

Because there's basically none. Literally the word 'Schlaf' (='sleep') has more similarities, especially if you lisple the 'Sch'.

[@HalfEye79]

Oh, there is a german word "prägnant". But doesn't mean "pregnant" at all, but "concise" But there are two word-pairs in English and in German, which relation to another is quite funny. I speak about the english words "who" and "where" and the german words "wo" and "wer". What about the funny relationship? Well, "who" means "wer" and "where" means "wo".

[@goldmund2902]

I once ordered something and when it arrived it had a label "gift ware" and as a german I initially was shocked... Why would they send me something poisonous without telling me beforehand. It took a minute for me to realize the false cognate, haha.

[@TheDankBoi69]

My friend: * falls down the stairs * oh I'm so embarrassed Me, an intellectual: Ayúdenlo, está embarazado

[@mr.normalguy69]

As a _pan_ sexual, I approve this video 👍

[@DawnDavidson]

😂

[@AntonyMegaPrime]

you love bread?

[@jbejaran]

The Danish word for speed is... well... "fart".

[@ShikamaruXT]

For me as agerman, the old english word for "laugh" sounds very close to "lachen", the german version of it. They are the same language families, after all

[@heronimousbrapson863]

A cause of frequent sniggering for English speakers learning German: "fahrt" which sounds like, well you know....

[@kyokazuto]

seems like Dutch one ups this by having "infart" and "utfart"

[@pierreabbat6157]

The English cognate of "laufen" is "lope"; the German cognate of "laugh" is "lachen". German "haben" (which is a true cognate of English "have") and Spanish "haber" are false cognates, but not false friends. They both mean "have" (only as a verb auxiliary in Spanish) but come from different PIE roots. "Vendra" means "will sell" in French (which is "venderá" in Spanish); "vendrá" means "will come" in Spanish (which is "viendra" in French).

[@storyspren]

There's a fun one between Finnish and Japanese, risu. In Japanese, it means squirrel. In Finnish, it means a stick or twig (I think if it's a stick it's a keppi, and a risu is thinner and whippier). And Finnish and Estonian have so many of these! Estonian, maasika: strawberry Finnish, maasika: literally "ground pig", old word for aardvark (direct translation of the word 'aardvark' from Afrikaans) Estonian, kassi: cat Finnish, kassi: bag Estonian, pulmad: wedding Finnish, pulmat: troubles, problems (not even partitive, so it's all of them) Estonian, öö: night Finnish, öö: uhm Bonus, Swedish, ö: island (it's written with one ö but it's pronounced long like the above ones) Estonian, aitäh: thank you Finnish, ai täh?: hol'up, what? Estonian, kurat: damn, fuck (it's a curse word, I don't know exactly how strong it is or what its literal translation would be) Finnish, kurat: mud or grime, pluralized (so... Grimes?), used when talking about all the grime in the current context, much like with pulmat And now that we're on the topic of profanity, going away from Estonian for this last one: paska. It's the name for a type of Ukrainian bread eaten at Easter. It's also a false cognate with the Finnish word for shit.

[@Lovuschka]

There's a lot of words that are offensive in American, such as: The German short for subscription. A German word for "yes". The English word for cigarette.

[@Lightmations2024]

a cigarette is cigarette in english or something

[@pedromenchik1961]

Portuguese and Spanish have so many examples: apelido, borracha, brinco, cachorro, cena, embaraçada, esquisito, latir, pastel, polvo, propina, rato, ruivo, saco, vaso…

[@lanzsibelius]

Don't forget graça

[@Pining_for_the_fjords]

I don't know about German, but in Norwegian "gift" means both poison and married.

[@kyokazuto]

Married is not gift in german but there is a "Mitgift", dowry, money or goods exchanged by marriage

[@frankhooper7871]

German 'Lauf' does have an English cognate in 'Lope'. Also the German meaning of 'Gang' is reflected in English 'Gangway' or 'Gangplank'.

[@brillitheworldbuilder]

The German W-questions: "Wo" means "where" and "wer" means "who". Additionally, "wie", which looks similar to the English "why", actually means "how". At least "wann" means "when" as expected

[@kyokazuto]

don't forget "was", no that's not something that happened in the past.

[@kendallisaac8511]

Not a single cognate, ,but a sentence: "Ton patron sort six pains sales pour son chat." Total nonsense in English, but makes sense (of a crazy sort) in French.

[@kyokazuto]

patron, English: father; donator Patrone, German: cartridge, especially of ink; bullet

[@williswameyo5737]

Patron means male guardian or father or donor

[@williswameyo5737]

Chat means cat in french, but in English chat means a talk or text

[@AaronOfMpls]

The _gymnasium_ one is a case of the meaning drifting. In ancient Rome, a _gymnasium_ was a place with an exercise yard _and_ a library and classrooms, where you could exercise your body and your mind. In English, the term was borrowed pretty much entirely to mean the _physical_ exercise place. While across continental Europe, the term was borrowed into multiple languages for university-prep high schools, keeping more with the _mental_ exercise -- while also keeping some Physical Education classes too. The Romans had borrowed both the word and the concept into Latin from Greek -- and the Greek word literally meant "naked place", since -- much like Greek athletes -- a gymnasium's visitors usually exercised nude for full freedom of movement.

[@ΆγιοςΧίλαριος]

"Dick" in German means fat („thick“) and you know what it means in English 😂

[@Selene_the_Wolf]

i know one false friends it is between Estonian(my native language) and Finnish it is the word koristama in Estonian it means to clean up and in Finnish it means decorated with and in proto-finnic it meant to make beautiful/pretty.

[@XVYQ_EY]

Bagno In italian: 🛁 bath In polish: 🤢 swamp

[@majman446]

as a pole, i can confirm we're all like shrek here

[@MoolsDogTwoOfficial]

@@majman446English: Friend Polish: Dónkei

[@jamespyle777]

Funny one between German and Russian: Russian: ich! (them) German: ich? (I) Russian: da! (yes) German: da? (there) Russian: ja! (I) German: ja? (yes)

[@HerculeYakko]

7:21 The embarazada example is actually more complicated and interesting than explained in the video as it is one of the few adjectives in Spanish that does not change with the subject's gender and the male form of the word, embarazado, is actually a true congnate meaning embarrassed. So if you are a woman who doesn't want to become embarazado, don't say you're embarazada.

[@andressigalat602]

I have spoken Spanish all my life, and never heard anyone say that a woman is "embarazado". You have to respect the gramatical gender with any of the two meanings, so a woman is always "embarazada", whether she's pregnant or embarrassed. Anyway, that word is barely used with that meaning in Spanish, we may say "embarazoso" to mean "embarrasing", but to mean "embarrassed" we say "avergonzado/a" except maybe if we are trying to be very poetic. "Embarazada" is almost always used for a pregnant woman, and even "embarazado" is more commonly used for the hypotethical situation of a pregnant man, than to mean "embarrassed". I admit that as Spanish is spoken in a very wide geographical area, and has many variants depending on the country, it's possible that in some regions "embarazado/a" with the same meaning as in English may be more commonly used, but even then, not respecting the gramatical gender would be incorrect, so there can not be women that are "embarazado".

[@HerculeYakko]

@@andressigalat602 I was told this fact by multiple high school/college Spanish teachers. I just checked two Spanish/English dictionaries. One has an entry for embarazado meaning embarasssed with no entry for emabarazada and the other other has an entry for embarazada with no entry for embarazado. It's probably an archacic term that has fallen out of actual use.

[@LuDa-lf1xd]

They lied to you for whatever reason. You can't just make a grammar error and say you are using an archaic term.

[@theanonymousmrgrape5911]

Some of these examples are not false cognates in the traditional sense: that is “words that sound similar by coincidence and don’t share an origin.” They’re to be distinguished from false friends, in that false friends may in fact still be true cognates. Basket in French is derived from a shortening of English Basketball, which in turn, comes from basket. Not a false cognate. Gang in English, comes from the same root as the German, which originally meant, to walk. Ditto for gymnasium. Both are transparently from the latin gymnasium, originally from Greek. English Embarrassed, and Spanish Embarazada are also cognates, in fact, the English probably comes from the Spanish via French. English pregnant, and Spanish pregunta, however, are *actual* false cognates, in that they sound similar but come from separate latin roots. Not trying to be too critical, but there is a distinction to be made here.

[@LaYziELoC7]

While we don't eat, in Spanish, Burros, we do eat Burritos which literally means "little donkey".

[@koppadasao]

RARE: English, Norwegian: Strange; Danish: Kind, good

[@ZarzenLetsPlay]

Let me tell you about the German verb "bangen" (to fear). After learning English many people that incorperate a lot of anglicisms in their natural speach have to read it twice to decide on its intended meaning..

[@niani7162]

Actually in English and Atualmente in Portuguese are false friends. In English Atualmente would translate as currently.

[@andressigalat602]

Same in Spanish with "actualmente".

[@SiqueScarface]

Mitsubishi never sold the Mitsubishi Pajero under that name in Spain. A German nickname for the prison is Kittchen. The Russian word for Lemon Tea is tshay s limonom, which sounds to a German like Scheißlinoleum, or crappy lino. In the same vain, the Russian word for Saudi Arabia is Saudovskaya Arabia, but saudov sounds to a German like saudoof (stupid like a sow). The English Attention sounds to a German like ä Tännchen, a small christmas tree. The German word "ringen" does not mean "to ring", but "to wrestle". The Dutch "winkel" (corner shop) is the same word as the German "Winkel" (angle), and the Dutch "ramen" (window) cognates with the German "Rahmen" (frame) and the Japanese "ramen" (noodles).

[@JackieOwl94]

When I was taking french class, we learned the french word for “shower”. Keep in mind that we were all around 14-15 years old, so the teacher gave us a minute or two to laugh our socks off before we continued with the lesson. Wise woman.

[@teh-maxh]

Not as different as it might seem. The English word is just a *very specific* wash.

[@123animit]

While false cognates are forgivable, I will never forget English to have one word to mean so many different things so often. In all these years they couldnt come up with different words for different things? Patrick should tell us how this catastrophe happened🤣

[@FoggyD]

Thought from the title that this video was gonna be about English words with two opposite meanings - but false cognates are also an interesting topic.

[@greenrobot5]

I understand you, for example the word "get" can have many translations depending on what follows it, I speak spanish so here's a few: get up: levantarse, get down: agacharse, get back: vengarse/volver, get in: entrar, get out: salir

[@yoshilovesyoshi]

Let's not forget that the bare bear bares his teeth while bearing a heavy load. That's real btw, though most people don't use "bare" regarding teeth very often.

[@pedromenchik1961]

@@FoggyD I love that idea. Words like dust, original, and nonplussed come to mind

[@abc4607]

Quick general vowel tip for romance languages (except French): a is pronounced like a in father, e is pronounced like e in bet, i is pronounced like ee in meet, o is pronounced like aw in raw, u is pronounced like oo in boo!

[@Martin97perussini]

Another example can be "persona", that in spanish just means person, or "poisson" in french, that means fish.

[@tonymouannes]

Poison actually comes from French, and it means the exact same thing in French. Poisson has a double s and is a totally unrelated word. Poisson/poison is the fewnch cersion of lose/loose. So I wouldn't consider poison and poisso to he false cognates, especial that the s and ss are pronounced differently.

[@efi3825]

Some German words and their English meaning: Billion --> trillion Tier --> animal Tag --> day beraten --> to counsel Art --> kind/sort/type bald --> soon blenden --> to blind Brief --> letter (as in, a piece of paper that you send to someone) fast --> almost Herd --> stove Kind --> kid Lack --> lacquer Rock --> skirt Stern --> star

[@jbrecken]

In a French Bible, you can read the story of when Jesus gave pain and poison to a crowd of 500 people.

[@mattjackson9859]

A number of years ago I read a news article regarding some legal kerfuffles involving a lady who was renting some premises for the purposes of shall we say, recreational punishment. As an attempt to make it sound more sophisticated she decided to call her little establishment her "Salon du Pain" without stopping to think how that works in French. I wondered if she got any calls from men requesting to be spanked with a crusty baguette...?

[@efi3825]

English Paul: "What's in the box?" French Paul: "Que contient la boîte?" Reverend mother: "Pain."

[@Lovuschka]

French also has "coin". Which is "corner" in English.

[@PipPanoma]

Isn't gymnasium just derived from the same thing in Latin? A place for education and exercise. Even nowadays we still have gymnastics/P.E. in school.

[@gubjorggisladottir3525]

2:51 "Gift" and "Giftur" also "Gifti" or "Giftust" eða "Giftist" mean married in Icelandic. She is married is "hún er gift" for a male he is married is "Hann er giftur" for the other forms "Gifti, Giftust and Giftist" is the changes to a word because of Icelandic grammar. How is it "the same" as in English? It has to do with the old thinking that a father gives his daughter to her future husband... 4:36 "Súpa and Sápa" are the icelandic words... "Súpa" is Soup and "Sápa" is Soap See what I noticed? We use the (samish) letter here... Where English has the letter u - Icelandic has the letter ú. Where English has the letter a - Icelandic has the letter á. 5:25 the Icelandic word for laughter is "Hlátur" and we "hlægjum" there are other forms of this word because of Icelandic grammar... "hló, hlóu, hlægja" and so on...

[@baystated]

As I get older, the more Bread=Pain.

[@kathleenhudson8429]

We had a program with the acronym of “SIP.” They changed it to “SI,” apparently because “sip” is considered a very bad word in the Korean language, and the Korean immigrants were upset about its use. Of course, in English it just means to swallow a small bit of liquid.

[@kenaikuskokwim9694]

The Concordia Language Village for Norwegian used to sell a T-shirt with a ring of three words in English and Norwegian. Each meant what the next one did in the other. I think one word was "barn"-- a farm building, and a child. I don't remember the other two. However... There is a trans-Atlantic case of this: UK/US Trolley/cart (in a store or station) Cart/tram (in a mine) Tram/trolley

[@FebruaryHas30Days]

There's air in English and there's air in Indonesian. There's jam in English and there's jam in Indonesian. There's cat in English and there's cat in Indonesian.

[@5roundsrapid263]

Don’t forget “soy”, which is a noun in English and a verb in Spanish. “Soy milk” would be “I am milk” in Spanish… 😂

[@LastofAvari]

Life is Pain au Chocolat... (Insert a bird from a Li Chen comic here)

[@blackparadoxx9656]

You forgot pie, which means foot in spanish.

[@pifci]

One that comes to mind is the word black vs blanco, blanc, bianco in English, Spanish, French and Italian respectively. Allegedly, they all have the same origin. Also the words blank and blanch that were adopted from French. So black is the black sheep, I guess.

[@Kastra_k]

In Czech the word for girl is "divka". In Polish the word "dziwka" is a slur for women.

[@Furienna]

I've seen a theory that the Swedish word "flicka" (which now is our most common word for "girl") has a not so innocent origin. So it's very much possible for a word to change its connotation in either direction.

[@greveskogen]

My favorite false friends between English and Norwegian is Aktor (Prosecutor), Barn (Child, Children), Anger (Remorse) and Dress (Suit).

[@Zethlynn]

One of my favorites is "Will" in English and "Wil" in dutch, the dutch word meaning "I want"

[@davidroddini1512]

How could he make a joke about butter?! This is a very serious channel! 😉

[@richardcarthew4893]

Not to mention English, where the number between two and four is pronounced ‘free’.

[@kyokazuto]

or where the number nine is pronounced like "nein" in german

[@okapijohn4351]

The recurrent mistake I do with false cognates is between "To Pretend" and "Pretender" in Portuguese. In Portuguese it means willingness to do something while in English it means faking something. The word in English I should use it "To Intend". Portuguese speakers struggle often with "Push" and "Puxar" at every door (This "x" in puxar is pronounced like the "sh" in push). Puxar in Portuguese means "To Pull", so it becomes a mental struggle when the door says push. Push in Portuguese would be "Empurrar". Portuguese and Spanish are very similar and are full of false cognates. When I am with Spanish speakers I love to ask them in Portuguese "What do you have to do to leave your mother embarrassed?" In Portuguese Embarassada also means Embarrassed, but the sentence sounds super similar to Spanish, so they understand, but with embarrassed meaning (for them) of pregnant. They get so confused.

[@christopherbentley7289]

This appeared to be something of a reverse of the video on the (supposed) relationship between language families and branches of Christianity, where for much of it I was thinking, "Yes, but even a false cognate has actually got to be at least a cognate." and we finally got to some real false cognates as the end approached. A word in another language of the same spelling but with a different pronunciation and meaning is not a 'false cognate', so if that is what you think a 'false cognate' is, Patrick, you don't know what one is. Even when false cognates have wildly differing meanings from each other - the most prominent, for me, being 'Zaun' in German, which converts to 'town' in English, but 'Zaun' just means 'fence' - the minimum requirement to be a false cognate is to come from the same etymological roots. This is what I understand by the term 'false cognate' and if anybody here commenting disagrees you have my invitation to do so, with your reasoning.

[@andressigalat602]

I'm getting very confused with this video and this comment, as I thought that "cognates" were words with a common etymological origin, independently of them having shifted in meaning over time, while "false cognates" were words that seemed to be cognates by chance, sounding similar and having similar meanings, despite having totally different etymologies. For example "embarrassed" and "embarazada" are true cognates but false friends, because they share an ethymology but differ in meaning. That's how I always understood it, and it has always made sense to me that way, but I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to argue with you.

[@christopherbentley7289]

@@andressigalat602 I think you may be right, on reflection, on what a 'false cognate' in reality is, as I went away and thought a little more about what I'd commented and came to the conclusion that what I was describing as a 'false cognate' was really a 'misleading cognate', or 'false friend', as you called it.

[@theskintexpat-themightygreegor]

I've embarrassed myself with "embarazado" with friends in Mexico....One suggestion that I thought you might mention is the English "magazine" vs. the French (and a few other languages, BTW) "magazine". In French and other languages, this means a shop.

[@88marome]

Don’t lauf mean leaf in Icelandic?

[@xhoques]

These things just pop up so naturally when learning between Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

[@MichaelSidneyTimpson]

There are some interesting occurances in borrowed words when the sounds from one language cannot accommodate all the sounds in one language to another. In Korean, (because they have no "f", they substitute "p") when you say something that sounds like "wipe" it is their borrowing of "wife", and if you hear "copy" they are saying "coffee", and "pool" is "full", and my favorite, "pollute" is "flute". They also have no "v", so there are borrowed words that use a "b" instead. (These are all common everyday Korean words--it isn't making fun of their English pronunciation--it was how they were borrowed into the lanaguage--pretty much all Koreans know how to say and "f" and "v" now because they had English since childhood, but when speaking Korean, they say these words in the Korean pronuciation, of course).

[@ajwinberg]

Fun video. Very informative.

[@TeomanasAbramovas]

This is not a letter by letter cognate. And I am not sure about roots of them. But the English word "highly" has same meaning and sound as the Turkish word "hayli". I guess root of Turkish word "hayli" comes from Persian.

[@Onibushou]

Another fun one- Aĉiū is a sneezing sound in English, but 'thank you' in Lithuanian.

[@ShriSanjay]

Hindi word सफर (safar) and English word suffer sound exactly same but means different where Hindi word सफर means 'to trevel'

[@allanrichardson1468]

I’m not sure about this one, but I was once told that the common English way to pronounce the name of a large city in southeast Florida (or maybe they meant the “local” English pronunciation, which substitutes a schwa for the final “ee” sound) is the same as a nasty insult in Vietnamese, the one that compares a man to the mythical King Oedipus. So if you are from that city, and a Vietnamese person asks you where you are from, just say “close to Fort Lauderdale.”

[@sage705]

When I make French toast I tell my wife "You will know pain, en Francais"

[@penriplays]

English - Name Japanese - Namae (pronounced Nah-Ma-Eh) Both mean Name, no link to one another at all

[@Kualinar]

In French, burro also mean a donkey. Not just any donkey, but a specific variety that was bred specifically to work in mines. The general French term term for a donkey is âne.

[@Nik_Stopher]

7:12 "Der Gang" pronounced /deɐ gaŋ/ means "hallway", but "die Gang" pronounced like dee gang means "the gang".

[@jensschroder8214]

English : gift = German: Geschenk; German: Gift = poison (the meaning is negative); German Mitgift = Eng: dowry (the meaning is still positive) The underlying verb is: give, given, German geben English: become means German: werden. German bekommen, English receive False friend in German: Ton und Ton, Englisch: clay and sound One word lost it's TH, Thon -> Ton, today it can only be known from the context. German: das Band und die Band; English: the ribbon and the band The English word was imported into German even though a word with the same name already existed. A cell phone is called in German: Handy, English handy means German: "praktisch", handlich, geschickt a antique car is named in German: Oldtimer "drive through" is called in German "drive in" English hound is cognate to German Hund, old English: swine to German Schwein, Ox to Ochs(e) , ...ford = ...furt, Oxford = Ochsfurt German: Mädchen / Mädel, old German: Maid is found in Englisch maiden, Eng: maiden name = German: Mädchen Name

[@Sparx632]

In Norwegian (and maybe other Scandinavian languages) the equivalent words for ‘shit’ and ‘dirt’ have opposite meanings. ‘Skitt’ (sk is a sh sound here) means ‘dirt’ while ‘dritt’ means ‘shit’. I always found that one to be a funny cognate situation and you can understand pretty easily how this happened.

[@GhostGlitch.]

The Spanish molesto is probably my favorite false cognate.

[@dancoroian1]

For English and Romanian: "Nervos" in Romanian means angry -- not nervous "Calculator" means computer -- not calculator Similarly to French, "librărie" is a bookstore, not a library

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

3:10 maybe it started out as a euphemism? Like "oh, I'm going to _gift_ you something"

[@carbo73]

there's a very famous one in constipated in English and constipado in Castilian or encostipat in Catalan (having a cold).

[@martinbruhn5274]

The german for laugh is lachen, whit, if you cut off the grammatical ending and only look at the root you get lach-, which already sounds pretty similar to the english laugh.

[@M-tl4xt]

Congrats on butchering every single French, italian, german, spanish and Latin word in the video 😂

[@thekreyolcadet]

my thoughts exactly 💀😭

[@GuyNamedSean]

I was gonna comment something similar. Part of me wants him to get with someone more knowledgeable with phonology like Dr Lindsey or Simon Roper to help him with some of it, but the rest of me enjoys chuckling at him struggling with foreign sounds.

[@M-tl4xt]

@@GuyNamedSean I mean, when most of his channel revolves around languages and names, you'd think he'd make a bigger effort to improve...

[@KirkWaiblinger]

Pretty solid on "gift" though

[@AnthonyRusso93]

Typical Brit amirite!?

[@Andreas_42]

German: laufen (to run) Swiss German: laufe (to walk) Except if you say "lauf schnell" (walk fast) to someone, you basically tell them to run. And "gang" can be used as a verb (1st person singular) in certain Swiss German dialects, meaning "to go". So the sentence "I gang go laufe." translates to "I'm going for a walk." in English and might confuse most Germans and English speakers alike, but for different reasons 😅

[@ifer1280]

Bellen in Dutch means to call someone on the phone, but in German it means to bark (like a dog). Fikken in Dutch is a lesser used synonym that means to burn. But Germans get really awkward when you use that word 🤣🤣

[@kyokazuto]

also don't confuse bellen with bellend. also reminds me of seeing "ficklampa" on the packaging of an electric torch.

[@hysterikole1]

My favourite is 'Lust' (and specifically the 'Lustgarten' found next to the Berliner Dom on Museuminsel in Berlin)...while they technically both mean pleasure/desire, the Germans lust is more plain The fairly common German phrase 'Ich habe keine lust'='I don't want to' (literally I have no desire). Meanwhile the English version is reserved for more...racy pursuits, let's say. I don't know if that counts as a false cognate, but I still smirk every time I pass it. (bonus trivia: the Lustgarten was called 'Marx-Engels Platz (square)' during the Soviet decline.

[@Pangui008]

"exit" (English) and "éxito" (Spanish) both come from latin "exitus" (=the way out). In Spanish the meaning drifted from getting out, to getting out of / ending a business or task succesfully, to simply "success" (the present meaning in Spanish). Do not confuse with "excitar" (Spanish), which, by the way, does not mean "to excite", but "to arouse". Yeah, kind of a minefield 😅

[@crescentwid5203]

I remember when my dad wss writing an email in Indonesian a few years ago and he wrote "sore" which means "evening" in the language... and I found it funny that the spellcheck didn't think it was a weird word LOL