User talk:KYPark/false cognates
False cognates
[edit]Another important point: A false cognate is a word that appears to have a shared linguistic origin to a given word, but which is, to people’s surprise, quite unrelated. The False Cognate with some translations of water that you listed are not false cognates. Nobody believes that they are linguistically related. They are simply words in various languages that have vaguely similar sounds to some Korean words, but they do NOT appear to be cognates. That’s like saying "Al" (Albert) is linguistically related to Arabic "Ali" or "Allah". Nobody thinks they are cognates, and therefore they cannot be considered "false cognates". They are simply words in other languages that are completely unrelated to a similar-sounding Korean word.
These words are NOT cognates with are Korean word, nor are they FALSE cognates:
- Belarusian: вада (vadá)
- Dutch: water
- German: Wasser
- Polish: woda
- Russian: вода (vodá)
- Slovene: voda
- Swedish: vatten
- Again I am very sorry but my understanding of false cognate is not so sofisticated as yours. Certainly you can define it in your own way, whether I or anyone else agree or not. To be fair, I would refer you to false cognate. --KYPark 14:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- The article at false cognate is very well done and I agree with it. The thing is that I am familiar with almost all of the examples listed in that article, because there have been quite a few educated people over the years that have believed those examples were really cognates. Books have been written about how universally shared words such as me, mama and dada are proof that all languages sprouted out of a single ancestral language around 5600 years ago. But I have never heard of anyone who thought 바다 and water were cognates. The distinction is between "not cognate" and "false cognate". In all fairness, I could be mistaken about this particular word, and perhaps there is a significant number of linguists who claim a genetic relationship. I have not encountered this claim before, but it’s possible. If there really is a significant group of people who suggest it’s a cognate, then the thing to do would be to add an ===Etymology=== section at the beginning of the article and trace the word back as far as possible, and that’s also where you would indicate that it’s a false cognate with English water, if in fact it is a false cognate rather than simply not cognate as I believe. —Stephen 11:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Truth in itself is of itself, independent from the popular belief and knowledge, and mostly hidden implicit and tacit. Five centuries ago, all believed geocentrism. The Indo-European language family used to totally ignore the sharing of linguistic heritage with the others. The least would be with the Far Eastern, and particularly Korean. Such Eurocentrism has been much harder to overcome than geocentrism.
- In Anglo-American academia, the Eurasiatic or Proto-world hypthesis was raised just a few decades ago by the later Greenberg. He was just knocking at the door, which was and still remains tightly closed. This state of affairs appears so strange and absurd, as the single linguistic ancestry is widely accepted in the Western Christianity.
- You strongly suggest that some established cognates later turn out to be false cognates. Simply such is not the case. From the beginning, the Far Eastern were never regarded as such cognates. It would be reasonabe to approach the other way around, from false to true cognates, as etymology makes progress.
- Dolmens are found almost all over the world, and half of them in Korea! Why should she be limited to them? She may have inherited lots of linguistic genes of very old origin from the single ancestry or Eurasiatic. Such hypotheses opened up the possibility of Korean cognates with the Indo-European, while no cognate whatsoever could be proved as such. Nevertheless, the more Korean false cognates with the Indo-European, the higher degree of belief and coherence as the major truth condition.--KYPark 15:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Stephen -- why shouldn't "bada" and say, "wada" (a stone's throw from "water") -- be related? Just because no-one has considered it before does not mean it is not a real connection. You give no real supporting claim.
Second -- just as Spanish has its "v"/"b" conversion -- perhaps Korean has something like it, as well. --Cofee Mapps, 12:26, 27 February 2011