Identical spellings: a totally awesome rarity

[polv]

False cognates

A false cognate is a pair of words that have similar sounds and meanings, but have different etymologies. These can exist in the same language or in two different languages. They are essentially neat coincidences that occur between (sometimes widely different) languages. Here’s a wikipedia article on the phenomenon. One between English and Japanese that many learn early on is name and 名前 (なまえ). (Compare the English origin and the Japanese origin.) Share any false cognates that you’ve noticed! …