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Cognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.
An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt vs. skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Further cognates of the same word in other Germanic languages would include German Schürze and Dutch schort "apron".
The word cognate derives from Latin cognatus "blood relative". 1
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Characteristics of cognate words
Cognates need not have the same meaning: dish (English) and Tisch ("table", German), or starve (English) and sterben ("die", German), or head (English) and chef ("chief, head", French), serve as examples as to how cognate terms may diverge in meaning as languages develop separately, eventually becoming false friends.
In addition to having separate meanings, cognates through processes of linguistic change may no longer resemble each other phonetically: cow and beef both derive from the same Indo-European root *gʷou-, cow having developed through the Germanic language family while beef has arrived in English from the Italo-Romance family descent. (ModE cow < ME cou < OE cū < PIE *gʷou > Latin bov- (stem; dictionary form is bos, borrowed from some Osco-Umbrian dialect) > OFr boef > ME beef)
Cognates across languages
Examples of cognates in Indo-European languages are the words night (English), nuit (French), Nacht (German), nacht (Dutch), nicht (Scots), natt (Swedish, Norwegian), nat (Danish), noc (Czech, Polish), ночь, noch (Russian), нощ, nosht (Bulgarian), ніч, nich (Ukrainian), ноч, noch/noč (Belarusian) noć (Croatian, Serbian), νύξ, nyx (Greek), nox (Latin), nakt- (Sanskrit), natë (Albanian), noche (Spanish), nos (Welsh), noite (Portuguese and Galician), notte (Italian), nit (Catalan), noapte (Romanian), nótt (Icelandic), and naktis (Lithuanian), all meaning "night" and derived from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *nókʷts, "night".
Another Indo-European example is star (English), str- (Sanskrit), astre or étoile (French), αστήρ (astēr) (Greek), stella (Latin, Italian), stea (Romanian and Venetian), stairno (Gothic), astl (Armenian), Stern (German), ster (Dutch and Afrikaans), starn (Scots), stjerne (Norwegian and Danish), stjarna (Icelandic), stjärna (Swedish), setare (Persian), stoorei (Pashto), seren (Welsh), steren (Cornish), estel (Catalan), estrella (Spanish), estrela (Portuguese and Galician) and estêre (Kurdish), from the PIE *h₂stḗr, "star".
The Hebrew shalom, the Arabic salaam and the Amharic selam ("peace") are also cognates, derived from Proto-Semitic *šalām-.
The phrase for new year in Mon-Khmer languages are noticeable cognates, Khmer "chnam thmei", Mon "snam thme" and Vietnamese "nam mei".
Cognates may often be less easily recognised than the above examples and authorities sometimes differ in their interpretations of the evidence. The English word milk is clearly a cognate of German Milch. On the other hand, French lait and Spanish leche (both meaning "milk") are less obviously cognates of Greek galaktos (genitive form of gala, milk) (<*g(a)lag-, galakt-), a relationship more evidently seen through the original Latin "lactis", as well as the English word lactic and other derived directly from Latin.
Cognates within the same language
Cognates can exist within the same language. For example, English ward and guard (<PIE *wer-, "to perceive, watch out for") are cognates, as are shirt and skirt (<PIE *sker-, "to cut"). In some cases, such as "shirt" and "skirt", one of the cognate pairs has an ultimate source in another language related to English, while the other one is native, as happened with many loanwords from Old Norse (which was mutually intelligible with Old English) borrowed when the Vikings conquered part of England. Sometimes, both cognates come from other languages, often the same one but at different times. For example, the word chief comes from the Middle French chef, and its modern pronunciation preserves the Middle French consonant sound. The word chef was borrowed from the same source centuries later, by which time the consonant had changed to a "sh"-sound in French. Such words are said to be etymological twins.
False cognates
False cognates are words that are commonly thought to be related (have a common origin) whereas linguistic examination reveals they are unrelated. Thus, for example, on the basis of superficial similarities one might suppose that the Latin verb habere and German haben, both meaning 'to have', were cognates. However, an understanding of the way words in the two languages evolve from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots shows that they cannot be cognate (see for example Grimm's law). German haben (like English have) in fact comes from PIE *kap, 'to grasp', and its real cognate in Latin is capere, 'to seize, grasp, capture'. Latin habere, on the other hand, is from PIE *gʰabʰ, 'to give, to receive', and hence cognate with English give and German geben.
The similarity of words between languages is not enough to demonstrate that the words are related to each other, in much the same way that facial resemblance does not imply a close genetic relationship between people. Over the course of hundreds and thousands of years, words may change their sound completely. Thus, for example, English five and Sanskrit pança are cognates, while English over and Hebrew ′avar are not, and neither are English dog and Mbabaram dog.
Contrast this with false friends, which frequently are cognate.
References
- ^ from co (with) +gnatus, natus, past participle of nasci "to be born". Cassell's Latin Dictionary. The English word can also have a range of meaning "related by blood, having a common ancestor, or related by an analogous nature, character, or function". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition s.v. cognate.
See also
