What is a cognate

Question

What is a cognate? It is a building in South America. It is a pair of shoes. It is a word that looks like the word that means the same in another language. Another word for town in Spanish.

• ¡Bienvenida al foro! Welcome to the forum! - qfreed Sep 29, 2011
• Cognado = cognate - ian-hill Sep 29, 2011

Answer 1

Strictly speaking, two (or more) words need only share a common origin in order to be cognates ("cognatus" in Latin -- "co" [together] and "natus" [birth]). They needn't be of different languages, sound/look particularly similar nor have the same meaning. The OED gives as an example "Eng. five, L. quinque, Gr. pente (but they have a Greek font), are cognate words, representing a primitive *pénke." (The asterisk prefixed to the last means that it is a reconstructed word [Proto-Indoeuropean, no doubt]). Although they all have the same meaning, I'm sure most would agree that they neither look nor sound particularly similar (unless you happen to be a historical linguist).

An example from Spanish: "correr"/"corriente"/"corrida" --- as the RAE points out, all "Del lat. currĕre" (meaning "to run"). An example from English: "fracture"/"frangible"/"fragile"/"fractal"/"fractious" all from [ultimately] the Latin verb frango, frangere, fregi, fractus [the "principal parts"] meaning "to break").

In a dual language forum, such as this, the term is used (more informally) to mean two English/Spanish words that look/sound quite similar and often (but not always) mean the same thing. If they appear/sound similar but have different meanings they are sometimes referred to as "false cognates" or (more informally) "false friends". Ironically, (well, I, at least, find it ironic) the more "academic"-sounding term is often inappropriate while the "informal" term is more accurate. For example: "constipado" in Spanish refers to a "head cold" (a blockage of the nasal passages) while "constipated" in English refers to a blockage somewhere quite different (our dictionaries suggest "estreñido(a)" as the Spanish equivalent [I simply avoid mentioning such conditions]). Nonetheless they are "real" cognates. However, over the centuries their meanings/uses have drifted apart (become more specialized) in the two languages.

The informal use (what will normally be encountered here refers, specifically, to words that look/sound like they should mean the same thing (and when their meanings differ, they are referred to as "false" friends).

Answer 2

Welcome to the forum. If you're looking for cognates here is a website full of them.

http://www.spanishstudies.com/spanish_cognates__letter_D.htm

Answer 3

It is not any of these:

1. It is a building in South America
2. It is a pair of shoes
3. Another word for town in Spanish

Answer 4

Dos palabras de dos idiomas distintos que tienen un origen común de otro
idioma, y por eso, su pronunciación y forma ortográfica son parecidas.

Two words from two different languages that have a common origin in a different language, and therefore, their pronunciation and spelling are similar.

Answer 5

It is a word that looks and means the same in english and spanish, a near cognate is a word that looks similar and means the same thing!

Answer 6

a cognate is a word that looks and souds the simaler in two differant counties an example is class in english is class and class in espaniol is clase