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Concept
Cognate
Summary
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the sound and the meaning of a word, cognates may not be obvious, and often it takes rigorous study of historical sources and the application of the comparative method to establish whether lexemes are cognate. Cognates are distinguished from loanwords, where a word has been borrowed from another language.
The English term cognate derives from Latin cognatus, meaning "blood relative".
Cognates need not have the same meaning, which may have changed as the languages developed independently. For example English starve and Dutch sterven 'to die' or German sterben 'to die' all descend from the same Proto-Germanic verb, *sterbaną 'to die'.
Cognates also do not need to look or sound similar: English father, French père, and Armenian հայր (hayr) all descend directly from Proto-Indo-European *ph2tḗr. An extreme case is Armenian երկու (erku) and English two, which descend from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh1; the sound change *dw > erk in Armenian is regular.
An example of cognates from the same Indo-European root are: night (English), nicht (Scots), Nacht (German), nacht (Dutch, Frisian), nag (Afrikaans), Naach (Colognian), natt (Swedish, Norwegian), nat (Danish), nátt (Faroese), nótt (Icelandic), noc (Czech, Slovak, Polish), ночь, noch (Russian), ноќ, noć (Macedonian), нощ, nosht (Bulgarian), nos (Welsh/Cymraeg),ніч, nich (Ukrainian), ноч, noch/noč (Belarusian), noč (Slovene), noć (Serbo-Croatian), nakts (Latvian), naktis (Lithuanian), νύξ, nyx (Ancient Greek), νύχτα / nychta (Modern Greek), nakt- (Sanskrit), natë (Albanian), nox, gen. sg. noctis (Latin), nuit (French), noche (Spanish), nueche (Asturian), noite (Portuguese and Galician), notte (Italian), nit (Catalan), nuet/nit/nueit (Aragonese), nuèch / nuèit (Occitan) and noapte (Romanian). These all mean 'night' and derive from the Proto-Indo-European 'night'.
Official source
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