Have you ever wondered why some words look, sound, and mean the same despite being from different languages? Historical, cultural, and social interactions frequently result in languages becoming a blend of other languages.
As languages develop and evolve, they adopt or adjust words, phrases, grammar, and punctuation. This is how you get cognates.
What are cognates?
Cognates are words from different languages that share the same linguistic ancestor. Because they come from the same source, they often share, or at least have similarities in, spelling, pronunciation, and meaning.
Cognate comes from the Latin word cognatus, meaning “blood relative”. Outside linguistics, it can also refer to people, concepts, and symbols. For example, a pair of cousins are cognates through their parents.
Common linguistic cognates come from Romance languages—those languages directly descended from Latin such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian.
Some examples of cognates are:
- From Latin, attentionem: attention (English), atencion (Spanish)
- From Latin, nutritivus: nourish (English), nutrir (Spanish), noris (Old French)
- From Greek, átheos: atheist (English), athéiste (French), ateo/a (Spanish)
- From Greek, kinēma: cinema (English), cinéma (French)
- From Proto-Indo-European, ph₂tḗr: father (English), vater (German), pater (Latin), pitṛ (Sanskrit), peder (Persian)
- From Proto-Indo-European, *ǵónu: knee (English), knie (German), knä (Swedish), kne (Norwegian), joelho (Portuguese)
Cognates don’t necessarily need to have the same meaning or look the same. As languages evolve, words can undergo semantic, phonetic, and spelling changes.
Consider the last example above. “Knee” and “joelho” share the same meaning but are spelled nothing alike even though they share a common etymological origin.
Types of Cognates
Here are some types of cognates you can easily recognize:
1. Words that are spelled and mean the same.
The first is exactly what it says. They are sometimes called true or perfect cognates. Some examples are:
- actor (English, Spanish)
- alcohol (English, Spanish)
- hotel (English, German)
- auto (English, German)
- fruit (English, French)
- question (English, French)
2. Words that are spelled slightly differently.
Some cognates may have fewer or more letters but are, for the most part, spelled the same way. They are also called near-perfect cognates.
- music (English), musica (Spanish)
- declaration (English), declaración (Spanish)
- ambitious (English), ambicioso (Spanish)
- brother (English), bruder (German)
- family (English), famiglia (Italian)
3. Words that are spelled differently but sound similar.
- twig (English), zweig (German)
- grey (English), grau (German)
- equal (English), igual (Spanish)
- coast (English), côte (French)
False Cognates and False Friends
False cognates are sometimes confused with false friends as they both deal with words that look and sound alike in different languages. But there is a distinction between the two.
False cognates are words that appear to have a shared origin but have different etymologies. The difference in origin is the important bit. This can happen within the English language or between English and another language.
Here are some examples, with their origins in parentheses.
- island (Proto-Germanic, *awjō), Isle (Latin, insula)
- cinder (Proto-Germanic, *sindra), French cendre (Latin, cinerem)
On the other hand, false friends are words that look and sound the same but have different meanings. They can share the same etymologies, just not the same definition.
An example of this is the English word actually and the Spanish word actualmente. They share the same origin (Latin, actuālis) but the first word means “in truth/honesty” while the second means “currently”. The Spanish equivalents for actually should, depending on the context, be realmente (really), en realidad (in fact), or verdaderamente (truthfully).
Using Cognates in Language Learning
Cognate awareness—the ability to identify and understand cognates can help accelerate your language learning. This is especially effective if you’re jumping into a language that shares roots with your mother tongue.
With it, you can comprehend words from a secondary language that are similar to those from your primary. You can even guess what unfamiliar words mean by paying attention to their root words, the affixes they use, and that language’s word formation rules.
Let’s say you’re learning Spanish as a native English speaker. If you know that English words that end in –ic are changed to ico in Spanish, you can easily build up your vocabulary. Traffic, toxic, exotic, athletic, allergic become tráfico, tóxico, exótico, atlético and alérgico.
And if your goal is to become a polyglot, learning new languages becomes easier the more you master. The process becomes more intuitive as your knowledge of cognates and morphology (the formation of words and their relationships to each other) grows.
Related Terms
Here are a few terms usually mentioned alongside cognates.
Etymon
An etymon is a word from which later words—which possibly become cognates—are derived. These subsequent words, known as descendant words, are not limited to just one language. For instance, the Latin word “amare” serves as the etymon for the English word “amorous” and the Spanish word “amar.”
Doublets
Doublets (or triplets and so forth) are words within a language that have the same etymological origin. A lot of them have near-synonymous meanings though some can diverge as the language grows. These words often enter a language from different routes and roundabout ways.
For example, chief, chef, cape, capo, caput, and head all come from the Proto-Indo-European *kauput-. However, each one came to English from different linguistic routes. All of them denote the concept of a “head” or “leader” but in different nuances.
Loanwords
Loanwords are words taken from one language and adopted into another. They reflect the development of a language as its users engage with people of other cultures and languages.
Some examples of loanwords in English are cafe (French), kindergarten (German), guru (Sanskrit), sushi (Japanese), and piano (Italian).
What do you think about cognates? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
