Once upon a time there was a language called Language Alpha. He lacked the word ‘milk’. This Language Alpha asked his sister, Language Beta if she could lend a word to fulfill this emptiness. Language Beta lent the word ‘Milch’ to Language Alpha but Alpha changed the form of the word a little bit and pronounced it ‘milk’. However, they remain recognizably similar to each other as two good siblings have to do since they share the same origin. In linguistics, these words are called cognates. 

Another time, Language Alpha needed to borrow a word for ‘dish’ too. Therefore, he went to his sister again. Language Beta gave him the word ‘Tisch’ however when Alpha returned home, he realized that ‘Tisch’ actually meant ‘table’. As Alpha had already a word for table, it decided to use it for referring to something else, so he used it for ‘dish’. He didn’t like the hard ‘t’ in the beginning, so he changed its pronunciation a little bit. So the word got a similar form but different meaning. These words are also called cognates in linguistics.

Alpha lacked words for colors too. This time, Alpha decided to go to Language Delta to borrow a word. Delta lent the word biały which means ‘white’, however, Delta lived very far away and Alpha forgot the original meaning of the word on his way home. He remembered exactly the opposite meaning: black. Of course, as always, he made some changes in the form as well. Although, the meaning is the opposite, these kind of words are also cognates.

Not everything is as it seems. Once upon a time there was an etymological dictionary which wanted to collect cognate words which share the same origin. He collected words like English bad and Persian bad because they have the same meanings and forms. He added the word English emoticon and Japanese 絵文字 emoji¸ Inuktitut kayak and Turkish kayak, etc. However, other etymological dictionaries started to complain because they also contained the same words but with different etymologies. So, our dictionary had to accept that the words that he chose, were not real cognates. They were only false cognates.  

Once upon a time, Language Gamma went to visit the country of Language Alpha as a tourist. She heard some words that sounded familiar to her and she thought she could use her tongue there because the words share the same origin. She met a pregnant woman and she wanted to make friends with her. She yelled: ‘Embarazada’. However, the pregnant woman got angry and yelled too: ‘How dare you? You are embarrassing’. Gamma drew the conclusion: ‘Well, it’s impossible to make friends here. Maximum false friends’.

We learned three similar linguistic terms:

Cognates: words with same origin, but maybe they have different meaning, and maybe different forms.

False cognates: words with similar sounds and meaning but different etymologies.

False friends: similar-sounding words with different meaning but etymologically related.

But how do we know false cognates are really false for sure? Can we be sure that similarities are the result of coincidences or is there something more?