Cognate Definition and Examples in English

Need a definition of  cognate?  A  cognate is a word that is related in origin to another word, such as the English word  brother and the German word  bruder  or the English word  history and the Spanish word historia. The words were derived from the same source; thus, they are cognates (like cousins tracing back their ancestry). Because they come from the same origin, cognates have  similar meanings and usually similar spellings in two different languages.   Key Takeaways: Cognates Cognates are words that came from the same root.Cognates can come into a language from different sources; they just have to have the same origin.False cognates look like theyre related to each other but are actually not. Cognates are  often derived from Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian) that have their origins in Latin, although some are derived from other language families (e.g., Germanic), noted Patricia F. Vadasy and J. Ron Nelson in their book Vocabulary Instruction for Struggling Students (Guilford Press, 2012).  Ã‚   If two words in the same language are derived from the same origin, theyre called  doublets; likewise, three are  triplets. A doublet may have come into English from two different languages. For example, the words fragile and frail both came from the Latin word fragilis. Frail came into English from French into Old English and stayed on through Middle and now Modern English, and the word fragile was borrowed directly from Latin instead of going through French first. Origins of Cognates The Romance languages have so much in common etymologically because the Roman Empire brought Latin to those regions. Of course, regional dialects were already established in present-day Spain, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, but Latin-influenced vocabulary throughout these regions for a long period—because of the relative stability of the empire—especially in the sciences and law. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, the language was still in use in various forms and continued to move into areas where the empire hadnt been, such as Slavic and Germanic regions, and it was useful as a universal language for people from different regions to be able to communicate. Christian missionaries brought the Roman alphabet to present-day Britain during the first millennium of the common era, and Latin remained in use in the Catholic church even as the Middle Ages evolved into the Renaissance. When the Normans conquered England in 1066, Latin words and roots came into English via Old French. Some English words also came in from Latin itself, thus creating doublets, two words with the same origin in the same language. The cognates would be the French words and the English words derived from them and the Latin originals. The derived words are all related to a common ancestor. More Examples of Cognates Here are a few examples of cognates (including those that share only the stem and not all the affixes, which are semi cognates, or paronyms) and their roots: night: nui (French), noche (Spanish), Nacht (German), nacht (Dutch), natt (Swedish, Norwegian); root: Indo-European, nà ³kÊ ·tconstipated: constipado (Spanish);  root (stem): Latin  cÃ… nstipÄ t-nourish: nutrir (Spanish),  noris (Old French); root: nutritivus (Medieval Latin)atheist:  ateo/a (Spanish),  athà ©iste (French), atheos (Latin); root: à ¡theos (Greek)controversy: controversia (Spanish); root:  controversus (Latin)comic (meaning comedian):  cà ³mico (Spanish); root: cÃ… mÄ ­cus (Latin)abortion: aborto (Spanish); root: abÃ… rtus (Latin)government: gobierno (Spanish),  governement (Old French),  gubernus (Late Latin); root:  gÃ… ­bÄ•rnÄ re (Latin, loaned from Greek) Obviously, not all the cognates for a root are listed, and not all of these words came directly from Latin into English; this list just shows the common ancestral roots—and some words even changed in between their roots and the cognates listed here. For example, government came into English from French, where many bs became vs. Language is an evolving thing, even though it may not seem like it to us, because its so gradual, happening over centuries.  Ã‚   Aid in Learning Other Languages Because of the relationship between Romance languages and their roots in Latin, learning a third language can be easier than learning a second because of the similarity in vocabulary, for example, learning French after already understanding Spanish. Author Annette M. B. de Groot illustrated the concept with an example that compares Swedish and Finnish learners of English: Ringbom (1987) reasoned that the existence of cognates might be one reason why Swedes are generally better in English than Finns; English and Swedish are related languages, sharing many cognates, whereas English and Finnish are completely unrelated. The consequence is that a Finn will be at a complete loss when encountering an unknown English word, whereas in many cases a Swede may infer at least part of the English cognates meaning. Using cognates to teach vocabulary can be very helpful to English language learners (ELL), especially those students whose native language is Spanish, because of the great amount of overlap between the two languages. Authors Shira Lubliner and Judith A. Scott noted, Researchers indicate that English-Spanish cognates account for one-third of educated adult vocabulary (Nash, 1997) and 53.6 percent of English words are of Romance-language origin (Hammer, 1979).  (Nourishing Vocabulary: Balancing Words and Learning. Corwin, 2008)   Not only can you learn new-language words faster and infer meaning to figure words out in context, but you can also remember the vocabulary more easily when the words are cognates. This kind of language study can begin with learners as early as preschool age. Problems that come  with learning vocabulary through cognates include pronunciation and false cognates. Two words might share similar spellings but be pronounced differently. For example, the word  animal  is spelled the same way in English and Spanish but pronounced with different stresses in each language. False, Accidental, and Partial Cognates False cognates are two words in different languages that appear to be cognates but actually are not (for example, the English advertisement and the French avertissement, which means warning or caution). Theyre also called false friends. Author Annette M. B. De Groot shared some examples: False  cognates  are  etymologically  related but no longer overlap in meaning between the languages; their meanings may be related but also opposite (in English an  auditorium  is a place for a large gathering, whereas in Spanish an  auditorio  is an audience;  stretch  means to extend in English but  estretcher  in Spanish is to make narrow).  Accidental cognates  are not etymologically related but just happen to share form (English  juice  and Spanish  juicio, judge...). (Language  and  Cognition in  Bilinguals and  Multilinguals: An Introduction. Psychology Press, 2011) Partial cognates are words that have the same meaning in some contexts but not others. For example,  twig  and  Zweig  are used similarly in some contexts, but in other  contexts,  Zweig  is better translated as branch. Both  Zweig  and  branch  have  metaphoric  meanings (a branch of a business) which  twig  does not share. (Uta Priss and L. John Old, Bilingual Word Association Networks in Conceptual Structures: Knowledge Architectures for Smart Applications, ed. by Uta Priss et al. Springer, 2007)