Japanese False Cognates

A false cognate of a word is a word in another language with similar form and meaning, but which is not actually related etymologically. In other words, the similarity is pure coincidence. The "false" part is to distinguish it from a cognate, which is just an etymologically related word, and which (if we go by the official definition, and this confuses people a lot) doesn't have to be similar in meaning or form.

In Japanese, there are both cognates and false cognates. The Japanese cognates of English words tend to have similar form and meaning, and this is really convenient for language learners, although that's not what makes them cognates. Japanese-English cognates are even distinguished with a special alphabet, the katakana (which technically is for foreign words of any origin, but the overwhelming majority are of English origin). In Japanese classes, there's often an early emphasis on katakana and romaji for this exact reason, since students can easily recognize lots of cognates-- I happen to disagree with this emphasis, and sometimes in Japanese class I feel like they're trying to teach me English rather than Japanese. It's going off on a tangent, but you can read my article, Kanji vs. Romaji, for some related sentiments.

With all the attention Japanese cognates get, there isn't a lot of attention given to the false cognate. But actually, in Japanese, a false cognate is more useful than a non-false one. It is, in some sense, a "real" Japanese word. Of course, English borrow words are also real Japanese, but it's like Spanish borrow words in English. Imagine a Mexican coming to the United States and his English teacher greeting him "Hola! Want a quesadilla??" Learning the transliterated bastardizations of your native tongue in a target language might give you a little klunky feel for the phonetical strength of that language, but it won't really give you any intuitive feel; learning lots of katakana English won't give you any deep feel of Japanese, or any practice reading kanji. For that you need Japanese words of Japanese (or at least Chinese) origin. Enter the false cognates.

I mentioned that the false cognates seem to get a lot less play than the "real" ones. My theory is that the "real cognates" are more visible because of how they're written in katakana. Especially to a Japanese teacher of Japanese, a false cognate doesn't "stick out" nearly as much as a real one, the real one is written in kanji and feels like natural, pre-WWII Japanese. "名前 (namae) is kanji, it's way too hard for these Japanese 101 students!", says the Japanese teacher, completely overlooking the close (and entirely coincidental) relation to its English counterpart, "name".

Here are the Japanese False Cognates that I can think of. I'll update the list as I think of others. Inclusion in this list is 100% subjective, it's based purely on my own judgment of what words are "similar in form and meaning".


JAPANESE FALSE COGNATE LIST

Words which (just by coincidence) resemble their own translation:

名前 (なまえ, namae): name
起こる (おこる, okoru): to occur
坊や (ぼうや, bouya): boy
そう (そう, sou): so (as in "Ahh, is that so")
胡瓜 (きゅうり, kyuuri): cucumber
脛 (すね, sune): shin
骨 (ほね, hone): bone
冗談 (じょうだん, joudan): joke
鍵 (かぎ, kagi): key
蹴る (ける, keru): to kick
トラ (とら, tora): tiger

Words which (by sheer coincidence) resemble something closely related to their translation:

見る (みる, miru): to see (resembles "mirror")
とても (とても, totemo): very (resembles "totally")
犬 (いぬ, inu): dog (resembles "hound")


FURTHER READING

False cognates are one way to get "free" (or nearly free) Japanese words of non-Western origin. The other way is through reverse cognates, words English borrowed from Japan. For those, see: Japanese Vocabulary Words You Already Know.

For a less serious diversion, get some language humor at You Might Be A Prescriptive Linguist If...

For those readers with some political bent: Why English Should Not Be The Official Language of the United States