False cognate Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
A pair of false cognates consists of two words in different languages that appear to be or are sometimes considered cognates when they're really not. Note that there could be an indirect connection between them; however, only words sharing a common root can be considered real cognates.For example, the word for "dog" in the Australian Aboriginal language Mbabaram happens to be dog, although there is no common ancestor or other connection between that language and English (the Mbabaram word evolved regularly from a protolinguistic form guduga). Similarly, the Korean word manhi (an adverb meaning "plentifully") resembles the English "many" and in the Japanese language the word 'to occur' happens to be okoru.
False cognates are particularly common in core or common vocabulary, as shown by this last example. Such cognates often occur in kinship terms (!Kung ba and French papa (both "father"); or Navajo má, Chinese mā, and English "mother") or in numbers (Korean tu and English "two").
The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to describe a false friend. The difference between a false cognate and a false friend is that while a false cognate stems from a comparable source but has come to have different meanings in two languages, a false friend is completely unrelated, and may even, purely by chance, mean the opposite, as Welsh ie = "yes" and Japanese iie = "no").