Yeah I’ve looked into wiki page for “false cognates” after leaving that reply, it would make sense to have a name for a situation where words from different languages sound similar and have similar definitions but are not etymologically related, but according to the wiki false cognates also can be words from the same language and I just don’t see the need to call them false cognates in this case, to my understanding they are called homonyms if they are identical in spelling and pronunciation but differ in etymology/definition, or homophones if they sound the same but are spelled differently. Vsauce made an awesome video on this topic a while ago.
False friends are for translators/interpreters, they are referred to as “translators’ false friends” because people make mistakes when making translations while having insufficient experience, like that example that you give with embarrassed and embarazada
I’m not a linguistics expert and this is just me offering an unsolicited layman’s opinion, but perhaps the nuance comes from whether or not one might still conceive of the words being related despite the acknowledged difference in definition?
For example, “bat” (the animal) and “bat” (the implement) are homonyms that are used to describe two clearly different things. But maybe one might think of “scale” being connected between its various uses when it is not. “Scale” (the measuring tool) uses plates which are similar to the flat plates of fish scales. Or that to “scale” a distance is like measuring a “scale” of height. Something like that.
Yeah I’ve looked into wiki page for “false cognates” after leaving that reply, it would make sense to have a name for a situation where words from different languages sound similar and have similar definitions but are not etymologically related, but according to the wiki false cognates also can be words from the same language and I just don’t see the need to call them false cognates in this case, to my understanding they are called homonyms if they are identical in spelling and pronunciation but differ in etymology/definition, or homophones if they sound the same but are spelled differently. Vsauce made an awesome video on this topic a while ago.
False friends are for translators/interpreters, they are referred to as “translators’ false friends” because people make mistakes when making translations while having insufficient experience, like that example that you give with embarrassed and embarazada
I’m not a linguistics expert and this is just me offering an unsolicited layman’s opinion, but perhaps the nuance comes from whether or not one might still conceive of the words being related despite the acknowledged difference in definition?
For example, “bat” (the animal) and “bat” (the implement) are homonyms that are used to describe two clearly different things. But maybe one might think of “scale” being connected between its various uses when it is not. “Scale” (the measuring tool) uses plates which are similar to the flat plates of fish scales. Or that to “scale” a distance is like measuring a “scale” of height. Something like that.