False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That is, they appear to be or are sometimes considered cognates when in fact they are not. Note that even false cognates may have an indirect connection between them, even if they lack a common root.
As an example of false cognates, the word for "dog" in the Australian Aboriginal languageMbabaram 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 *gudaga). Similarly, in the Japanese language the word 'to occur' happens to be okoru.
The basic kinship terms mama and papa comprise a special case of false cognates (cf. !Kungba, Chinesebàba, Persianbaba, and Frenchpapa (all "dad"); or Navajomá, Chinesem?ma, Swahilimama, Quechuamama, and English "mama"). The striking cross-linguistical similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition (Jakobson 1962). According to Jakobson, these words are the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies; and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves. Thus, there is no need to ascribe the similarities to common ancestry. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that these terms are built up from speech sounds that are easiest to produce (bilabialstops like m and b and the basic vowela). However, variants do occur; for example, in Fijian, the word for "mother" is nana, and in proto-Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was *papa (> ?a?a > haha). Furthermore, the modern Japanese word for "father," chichi, is from older titi. In fact, in Japanese the child's initial mamma is interpreted to mean "food". Similarly, in some Indian languages, such as Marathi, a child's articulation of "mum-mum" is interpreted to mean "food".
The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to describe false friends. One difference between false cognates and false friends is that while false cognates mean roughly the same thing in two languages, false friends bear two distinct (sometimes even opposite) meanings. In fact, a pair of false friends may be true cognates (see false friends: causes).
A related phenomenon is the expressive loan, which looks like a native construction, but is not.
Some historical linguists presume that all languages go back to a single common ancestor. Therefore, a pair of words whose earlier forms are distinct, yet similar, as far back as they've been traced, could in theory have come from a common root in an even earlier language, making them real cognates. The further back in time language reconstruction efforts go, however, the less confidence there can be in the outcome. Attempts at such reconstructions typically rely on just such pairings of superficially similar words, but the connections proposed by these theories tend to be conjectural, failing to document significant patterns of linguistic change. Under the disputed Nostratic theory and similar theories, some of these examples would indeed be distantly related cognates, but the evidence for reclassifying them as such is insufficient. The Nostratic hypothesis is however based on the comparative method, unlike some other superfamily hypotheses.
Egyptian *maRaR (to see, to look), Japanese miru (to look),Spanishmirar (to look at, to watch) and Portuguese mirar (to stare), though the Portuguese and Spanish words are related
English able and Turkish-abil/-ebil (ability infix)
English "among" and Bisayan "among" (accidentally included)
English am (first person present tense of to be), Etruscan am (to be), and Sumerianam (to be)
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