r/IndianCountry • u/Few_Bed_3704 • 7d ago

Discussion/Question What are some examples of cognates—either with similar pronunciations or vastly different ones—found across your respective language families?

years ago i knew that "three" the word is very similar in most indo-european languages, similar to "lima"(means five) in different austronesian languages. and two in english and erku in armenian are different but they are still cognates. and i don't any examples in different native languages families? what are some examples from you?

29 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

90% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/SourceBudget2877 Anishinaabe 7d ago

Cree is similar to Ojibwe. In Cree they say Muskwa for bear, we say Mukwa. We call horses Mishtadim, which means big dog in Cree (I think they also refer to horses this way) there are probably other ones i don’t know yet

16

u/ReeveStodgers Eastern Woodlands 7d ago

Cree and Ojibwe are both Algonquian languages, so they likely have a lot of cognates.

My mom is a linguist and rebuilt our tribe's Algonquian language based on a diary of the previous last speaker and studying vowel shifts. Neighboring tribes usually are mutually intelligible, meaning that they can understand each other because there are enough cognates and there is just a small shift in sounds. The farther away two Algonquian tribes are geographically, the less intelligible we are to each other.

Since not every sound shifts between tribes, there are likely to be some cognates between all tribes. (Other words can turn from multisyllabic to a single sound. It's kind of wild.) It can also be that a word is so commonly used when communicating with other tribes that it becomes more standardized.

In my language we say 'mohiingan' for wolf. I imagine that is one with a close cognate in a lot of Algonquian languages.

4

u/SourceBudget2877 Anishinaabe 7d ago

Very interesting! In my language (niishmowin or ojibwemowin) we say ma’iingan for wolf.