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Likewise, English much and Spanish mucho look similar and have a similar meaning, but are not cognates: much is from Proto-Germanic *mikilaz < PIE *meǵ-and mucho is from Latin multum < PIE *mel-. A true cognate of much is the archaic Spanish maño 'big'. [6]
False cognates are words in different languages that seem to be cognates because they look similar and may even have similar meanings, but which do not share a common ancestor. False friends do share a common ancestor, but even though they look alike or sound similar, they differ significantly in meaning.
While traditional linguistic studies had developed comparative methods (comparative linguistics), chiefly to demonstrate family relations between cognate languages, or to illustrate the historical developments of one or more languages, modern contrastive linguistics intends to show in what ways the two respective languages differ, in order to help in the solution of practical problems.
The meanings of these words do not always correspond to Germanic cognates, and occasionally the specific meaning in the list is unique to English. Those Germanic words listed below with a Frankish source mostly came into English through Anglo-Norman, and so despite ultimately deriving from Proto-Germanic, came to English through a Romance ...
The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to refer to false friends, but the two phenomena are distinct. [1] [2] False friends occur when two words in different languages or dialects look similar, but have different meanings. While some false friends are also false cognates, many are genuine cognates (see False friends § Causes). [2]
Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as hiniestra in Spanish, or dropped out of use entirely. The Spanish and Portuguese terms defenestrar meaning "to throw through a window" and fenestrado meaning "replete with windows" also have the same root, but are later borrowings from Latin.
Etymology (/ ˌ ɛ t ɪ ˈ m ɒ l ə dʒ i /, ET-im-OL-ə-jee [1]) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. [2] In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics , etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. [ 1 ]
This is a list of some Spanish words of Germanic origin. The list includes words from Visigothic , Frankish , Langobardic , Middle Dutch , Middle High German , Middle Low German , Old English , Old High German , Old Norse , Old Swedish , English , and finally, words which come from Germanic with the specific source unknown.