# Etymologically, are there words that are the same in two different languages? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 22, 2007, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270 "2007-02-22T20:29:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/21 "2007-02-23T03:12:29Z")
[QUOTE=HubZilla] To clarify, have there ever been instances of words in two completely different languages sounding the same for the same thing? . [/QUOTE] American English - **Okay** Scottish - **Och Aye** = “Oh, yes” Choctaw - **oke** = “it is so” Finnish - **oikea** = “correct”, “exact” French Occitan dialect - \*\*òc \*\*= “yes” Mandingo (West African) - **o ke** = “that’s it”, “all right” Tewa - **oh-ka** = “all right” Wolof (West African) - \*\*waw kay \*\*= “yes indeed”. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/22 "2007-02-23T04:01:29Z")
> **[News, Politics, Sports, Mail & Latest Headlines - AOL.com](https://www.aol.com/)** > > Discover the latest breaking news in the U.S. and around the world — politics, weather, entertainment, lifestyle, finance, sports and much more. > [@](#): > > Arabic akh ‘brother’ Mongolian akh ‘brother’ > Bikol aki ‘child’ Korean aki ‘child’ > Blackfoot aki ‘woman’ Even akhi ‘woman’ > Arabic ana ‘I’ Gondi ana ‘I’ > Arabic anta ‘thou’ Japanese anta ‘thou’ > Arabic ard ‘earth’ Dutch aard ‘earth’ > Hebrew ari ‘lion’ Tamil ari ‘lion’ > Hebrew awir ‘air’ Welsh awyr ‘air’ > Kyrgyz ayal ‘woman’ Parji ayal ‘woman’ > Ga ba ‘come’ Hebrew ba ‘come’ That’s just the beginning, it goes on and on… One of the fun things is when the same word has opposite meanings… > [@](#): > > Catalan alt ‘high’ Turkish alt ‘low’ > Dutch beter ‘better’ Turkish beter ‘worse’ > English black Old Chinese bhlak ‘white’ > Mongolian bog ‘demon’ Russian bog ‘god’ > Kashmiri ded ‘grandmother’ Russian ded ‘grandfather’ > English he Hebrew hi ‘she’ > Coptic i ‘come’ Japanese i-, Latin i- ‘go’ > Mongolian ir- ‘come’ Spanish ir ‘go’ > Hebrew ish ‘man’ Jacaltec Mayan ish ‘woman’ etc. > [@Alive At Both Ends](#): > > My favourite pair is “gaijin” (Japanese) and “goyim” (Hebrew) That’s interesting, compare Japanese _yabanjin_ ‘person from the wilderness’ and Turkish _yabanci_ (pronounced yabanji) ‘person from the wilderness’. The two words are completely unrelated because the Turkish word for wilderness, _yaban_, originated as a loanword from Persian: _biyaban_ meaning literally ‘without water’ (_bi ab_). No connection to anything Japanese, just one of those coincidences. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/23 "2007-02-23T04:36:55Z")
[QUOTE=HubZilla] Was a cat pronouced (roughly) “cat” in Arabic [/QUOTE] Arabic قطة _qittah_ = kitty. But that isn’t a coincidence or a false cognate. The original word for cat seems to have originated in an ancient language of North Africa, perhaps the ancestor of Berber (compare Berber _kadiska_), and became a loanword in a wide range of languages, from Nubian (_kadis_) to Arabic to Latin (_cattus_), Old Irish (_cat_), Slavonic (_kotka_) and Germanic (_Katz_). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/24 "2007-02-23T04:46:43Z")
I’ve always thought it kind of funny that the English word “brat” is more or less pronounced the same as the Russian word “брaт” (brat), which means “brother”. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/25 "2007-02-23T06:10:32Z")
There’s even something like “false cognates” inside the same language. For example there is an English word “email” which means to imprint a sheet by hammering it over (chain) mail, similar to embossing a sheet by hammering it over a boss, which has some similarity to the modern “email” short for “electronic (postal) mail”. Or to take an example from a proper noun (which maybe doesn’t count), Key West, which is the westernmost Key (island) in the chain extending from the southern tip of Florida. In this case “West” is an Anglicized rendering of the French for “bones”, which early European visitors found there (IIRC). ---
**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/26 "2007-02-23T07:19:52Z")
[QUOTE=suranyi] Not true in Hungarian, either: “anya” Ed [/QUOTE] Or, colloquially, “mama.” (like mommy/mummy in US/UK English). My wife (who is a Linguist) told me about the ‘m’ thing, saying that it is one of the first sounds an infant is physically able to make. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/27 "2007-02-23T10:35:37Z")
[QUOTE=AskNott] Taxi and abracadabra mean and sound the same in dozens of languages. [/QUOTE] Yes, but it’s the same origin. The question was about when you get the same word which means the same but it’s not due to having being derived from the same original word in a parent language. **Napier** , the name that got anglicized into Key West is not French but Spanish: Cayo Hueso (cayo is “small island”, hueso “bone”, because it’s long but narrower in the centre, sort of like a thighbone). ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/28 "2007-02-23T17:35:37Z")
[QUOTE=HubZilla] To clarify, have there ever been instances of words in two completely different languages sounding the same for the same thing? **The languages have to have seperate origins, and assume no previous contact between cultures.** Tagalog’s word for toothpaste is Colgate, but only because they took the word from Westerners who introduced toothpaste. So that doesn’t count. Nor do Romance languages sharing Latin roots. Was a cat pronouced (roughly) “cat” in Arabic, “cat” in Chinese, “cat” in Lakota, etc. Just re-read Hitchhiker’s Guide and got the idea from every planet calling a Gin & Tonic a “Gin & Tonic” before meeting other planets. [/QUOTE] **Bolding is mine**. The boundaries of what you are asking make an answer impossible. Anthropologists and Creationists agree that mankind started in one place, and it spread from there. Thus, there was a continuous chain of “contact between cultures” from the first people to all the diverse cultures of today (and several that no longer exist.) I was chided by **hajario** and **Nava** for my suggestions of “taxi” and “abracadabra.” I did some digging around, and I found they’re right about “taxi,” which surely came from the French “taximetre.” **Abracadabra** is not so easily pinned down. Four or five linguistic sources have original phrases close enough to call them possible sources. [QUOTE=Quinion] \*It’s from the Aramaic phrase avra kehdabra, meaning “I will create as I speak”. \*The source is three Hebrew words, ab (father), ben (son), and ruach acadosch (holy spirit). \*It’s from the Chaldean abbada ke dabra, meaning “perish like the word”. \*It originated with a Gnostic sect in Alexandria called the Basilidians and was probably based on Abrasax, the name of their supreme deity (Abraxas in Latin sources). [/QUOTE] [Abracadabra: Ancient Magic Word Origins Explained](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-abr1.htm) See also [http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19991007](http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19991007) Now, if I have once again misunderstood the puzzle, I surrender. I am too tired to go any further. ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/29 "2007-02-23T17:48:31Z")
Anglo-Judaic nursery rhyme… _mi_ is “who” _hu_ is “he” _he_ is “she” and _dog_ is a fish… (that last line doesn’t work that well in Modern Hebrew, where the word for “fish” is actually pronounced _dag_, but oh, well…) Another false friend: In slavic languages that lack an “h” sound (like Russian), the word “host” has a true cognate – _gost_. Which sounds a lot like “guest” and caused me no end of confusion watching Soccer and Basketball games that took place in Russia… :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/30 "2007-02-23T21:15:27Z")
[QUOTE=Noone Special] Anglo-Judaic nursery rhyme… _mi_ is “who” _hu_ is “he” _he_ is “she” and _dog_ is a fish… [/QUOTE] It works in an American accent. The version I heard continues: …and when you call a girl, you say “boy”. ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/31 "2007-02-23T21:31:27Z")
[QUOTE=Martha] The version I heard continues: …and when you call a girl, you say “boy”. [/QUOTE] 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/32 "2007-02-23T22:49:08Z")
[QUOTE=AskNott] The boundaries of what you are asking make an answer impossible. Anthropologists and Creationists agree that mankind started in one place, and it spread from there. Thus, there was a continuous chain of “contact between cultures” from the first people to all the diverse cultures of today (and several that no longer exist.) [/QUOTE] I was unaware of the concept of False Cognates when I posted the OP. Now I am (ignorance fought!) My OP wanted to exclude French and English words with common Latin roots. I also wanted to exclude words that were passed from one culture to another, like the Tagalog word “diksiyonaryo”. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say Filipinos got the term “diksiyonaryo” from the Europeans. It would be to say Arabic akh ‘brother’ came from the Mongolian akh ‘brother’ (or vice versa). While “akh” could be a word spoken in Olduvai Gorge or around the Tower of Babel, I’ll chalk it up to a coincidence, which is what I was looking for. ---
**Author:** ![flight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbce88/32.png) [@flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flight)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/33 "2007-02-23T23:23:02Z")
[QUOTE=HubZilla] Just re-read Hitchhiker’s Guide and got the idea from every planet calling a Gin & Tonic a “Gin & Tonic” before meeting other planets. [/QUOTE] If I remember correctly they all had the same sound but different spellings and described different drinks, from one that was water at slightly above room temperature to one that could kill a bull at thirty paces. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2007, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/34 "2007-02-24T00:08:54Z")
[QUOTE=AskNott] **Bolding is mine**. The boundaries of what you are asking make an answer impossible. Anthropologists and Creationists agree that mankind started in one place, and it spread from there. Thus, there was a continuous chain of “contact between cultures” from the first people to all the diverse cultures of today (and several that no longer exist.) [/quote] But new words develop over time in cultures that are no longer in contact with other cultures. There has not been a “continuous chain of contact” with all cultures. There is, of course, an historical chain, a family-tree if you will, but the cultures have not remained in contact. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2007, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/35 "2007-02-24T00:56:21Z")
[QUOTE=Martha] The version I heard continues: …and when you call a girl, you say “boy”. [/QUOTE] Feminine imperative of ‘come’ - בואי ---
**Author:** ![Ana\_Byrd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Ana\_Byrd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ana_Byrd)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2007, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/36 "2007-02-24T01:48:37Z")
[An interesting page related to this.](http://www.zompist.com/proto.html#maliqa) ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2007, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/37 "2007-02-25T08:57:26Z")
Another good one I just remembered… this involves two false cognates and three separate languages, and thus requires some buildup. I heard this from a former friend of mine, of Romanian descent: According to him, the word \*“fach” \*(sp?) (pronounced “fuck”) means “[I am] doing/making”. Additionally, in Hebrew, the word _“off”_ means poultry. So, he said, if one entered their kitchen during preparations for a large meal and asked his mother _“che fache?”_ (“what are you doing/making?” In Romanian. Yes, I’ve probably mangled the spelling…) the most likely answer would be a curt _“fuck off!”_\* 😃 Oh, and while I’m mentioning _off_, the word _on_ in Hebrew means… virility. Thus we have a _“Klinica On”_ which deals with all sorts of male “problems”… which gave rise at one point to a chicken/schnitzel fast-food joint which was naturally called _“Klinika Off”_ - “I’m making chicken,” in equal parts of Romanian, Hebrew and Snark; in case anybody failed to connect the dots… ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2007, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/38 "2007-02-25T09:38:04Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Yes, they are called [False Cognates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate), although they don’t have to be identical to be labeled such. Here are the English examples from that wikipedia article: [/QUOTE] The Chinese/English ones are close but no native Chinese speaker would understand “bullshit” means “bu shi.” The other ones are similar: close but no cigar ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2007, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/39 "2007-02-25T12:11:29Z")
[QUOTE=Keeve] I don’t know how true it is, but I’ve heard that in every known language, the word for “mother” has the “m” sound as either the first consonant or as the main consonant. [/QUOTE] Others have been pointed out. I’ll mention Cherokee, in which mother is “eji”. More interesting Cherokee tidbits: “Juganawv?i” means warm, south, and Democrat; “uyvtlv?i” means cold, north, and Republican. (“?” is a glottal stop, as in English “uh oh”). When you see “tee hee” as a soft giggle, it forces a bit of semantic whiplash. “Teehee” in Cherokee means killer. Finally, “wahayv” and “wolf” are close to what the OP is asking for, but not identical. Wahayv is actually closer in sound to “wife”. ETA: “Squash” is the same in both languages, but both are taken from Algonquin forms, albeit separately. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2007, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270/40 "2007-02-26T11:45:18Z")
The really weird thing is, the word _akh_ in Arabic and Mongolian is sometimes extended to _akhun_ in the nominative case in both languages for grammatical reasons, although the -_un_ ending is as coincidental as the base word. Likewise–this is the wrongest I’ve ever seen a linguist get it wrong–Mario Pei wrote in _The Story of Language_ (1965, p. 363) > [@](#): > > Italian _donna_ and Japanese _onna_ sound alike and both mean ‘woman,’ yet we surmise that they are quite unrelated, and while we cannot trace the Japanese word to an earlier form, we can press the Italian word back to its original Latin form _domina_, at which point its similarity to the Japanese word becomes far less marked. In fact, the reverse is true. I don’t know how Pei could have been ignorant of the work on Old Japanese language. Maybe in 1965 it hadn’t been published yet? Contrary to Pei’s imagination, the word for woman in Old Japanese, the source of _onna_, is _womina_, an even more marked match with _domina_. Instead of 4 out of 5 letters matching, now it’s 5 out of 6! For a bonus, it makes a close match with English _woman_ too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/etymologically-are-there-words-that-are-the-same-in-two-different-languages/393270.md?page=3)