New answers tagged etymology
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Is “actual” both a false friend and a cognate?
Yes, like many false friends, they are true cognates.
From the Wiktionary definition of cognate
English embarrassed is a true cognate of Spanish embarazada but is a false friend because the modern ...
- 7,531
2
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Accepted
Are the Croatian word "struna" (string of a musical instrument) and the English word "string" related?
Both Slavic and Germanic have str- as the regular reflex of word-initial PIE *sr- (and also *str-, although this is rarer), so genuine cognates beginning with str- in Germanic will be expected to ...
- 7,013
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Is Mongolian "шинэ" / "ᠰᠢᠨᠠ", meaning "new", a borrowing of Chinese "新"?
It is indeed possible for Khalkha Mongolian шинэ šine to be related in some way to Chinese 新 xīn “new”, but it is hard to say for sure. The term might be a borrowing the Middle Chinese (c. from 4th to ...
- 680
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