French is a romance language, so it’s no surprise that some words resemble those of Latin. What is surprising is that some French words still have the same Latin spelling even though the French pronunciation of the words differs from the Latin pronunciation of them.
Example 1
French et
Latin et
English translation: and
Example 2
French est
Latin est
English translation: third-person singular present conjugation of the verb to be (e.g., he is, she is)
Example 3
French non
Latin non
English translation: The French word non means no in English while the Latin word non negates a sentence in Latin.
Do you know other French words like these?
False cognates are pairs of words that sound similar and that have a similar meaning but actually have different etymologies.
Example 1
Japanese ありがとう (Pronunciation: arigatō)
Portuguese obrigado
English translation: thanks
Example 2
English much
Spanish mucho
Example 3
English (to) occur
Japanese 起こる (Pronunciation: okoru)
Example 4
Mandarin 弯 (Pronunciation: wān)
English round (object)
Example 5
And lastly, the famous example of a false cognate between English and the extinct language of Mbabaram:
English dog
Mbambaram dog
Do you know any other false cognates?
