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Viewing Learning German: What Are Cognates and False Cognates?Learning German: What Are Cognates and False Cognates?
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By Michael Gabrikow It has been often speculated and questioned which foreign language is easier to learn for a native English-speaking person or for someone that has already mastered the English language. Spanish has the advantage of being so widely spread and having influenced the entire world already, however it is a Latin language, hence a bit harder to adjust to. French is also quite popular, but it is also a Romance language (hence a 'daughter' of Latin languages) and it's often considered 'artistic' enough as to make it harder to learn for an English speaker. German, on the other hand, shares the same lexical foundations as English, both being Anglo-Saxon languages; but the extremely long words in German make learning it a scary prospect for many. Still, of the three options, German remains the most accessible one because of the large shared set of cognates in the English and German languages. Cognates are words that look and sound alike in both languages, and their meaning and syntactic values are also equal. Sometimes these cognates are identical, but they can often stray off by a few letters and still look and sound similar. The important thing is that they keep their shared meaning and syntactic value, becoming 'false cognates' in any other case. False cognates are quite numerous between the English and German languages, and they will oftentimes be a hindrance to learning them. So Germans learning English will have an equal amount of trouble with false cognates (called 'falsche Freunde' in German) as will English-speaking persons trying to learn German. Cognates and false cognates are sometimes divided into a few categories, as follows: Category A (words look alike, mean the same and almost sound alike) Examples of cognates falling into this category include: butter, winter, best, etc. Category B (words almost look alike and they mean the same thing) Examples of category B cognates include (German - English): Bier - beer, Bett - bed, Faust - fist, Gott - God, Haus - house, Maus - mouse, Laus - louse, etc. Category C (words in this category are false cognates, but they can become cognates in specific contexts) This is not a very large category of words, being an intermediary between cognates and false cognates. Examples could include: See - see (sea or lake, in German), Residenz - residence (residence or seat in German), etc. Category D (words that almost look alike but never mean the same thing) Words falling into these categories are pure false cognates. Examples are abundant, such as: Baum - beam (tree), sterben - to starve (to die), Wald - weald (forest), werden - weird (to become), Schmerz - smart (pain), and the list could go on for a while. Category E (words look identical but their meaning is completely different) This is a subset of Category D false cognates, in which the two 'false friend' words are identical in spelling and almost identical in pronunciation in both German and English. Obviously, the list is smaller, examples including (German/English spelling followed by German definition): Hall - sound, Gift - poison, also - well, fast - almost, bald - soon, etc. You can find a more complex list of cognates and false cognates in various places throughout the Internet and it's a good thing to start with them whenever you're trying to start learning German. Cognates will help you a lot in understanding the German language, and they will make it feel a lot closer to English than any other language. In addition, knowing false cognates will also help you in avoiding the trap of using a word in an incorrect context. About the Author: Increase your German vocabulary at www.InternetPolyglot.com/lessons-de-en by playing online games. Learn German online efficiently. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com |
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