Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

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Birdlang
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Birdlang »

Bird.
Obviously, the name of the language Bïrd(azûoîli).
Then, the river Kuku (sounds like cuckoo).
And the name for the Classic bird instrument vriba (sounds like vrba in Czech).
And the words
Pymp (pImb) child
Wēlz (we:lz) USA sounds like Wales
Hukka (hUkr\=) lady
Jrûl (dZruUl) to drool
Hello there. Chirp chirp chirp.

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Toasterbot959 »

Gá (| ɡeɪ |) meaning Where in Nāzá (Na:zeɪ)

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Imralu »

Total coincidence that I just noticed.

Ngolu:

Mari ua na.
be.even/settled NOM.2s.MASC NOM.1s.MASC
= We're even./We're OK. (Spoken from one initiated man to another. Indicates no grudges or ill-feelings, eg. after a fight, cf. German Wir sind quitt.)

It's pronounced [mà.ɾí.wá.ná]

Ha mari ua na?
Are we cool?
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Matrix »

Southlandic:

Mìc means 'shit'. It is pronounced exactly the same as the English name Mitch.
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Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by WeepingElf »

Old Albic dram [drɐm] 'bass line, drone (in music), fundamental tone in overtone singing' sounds almost like English drum.
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Dezinaa »

’iiŋìm:

ipa [iβa]- sound, noise
ki’ti [cɪʔti]- rabbit (sounds like "kitty")
nakpú- whale ([dɐkpu˥] utterance-initially, sounds like "duck poo")
napai [naβej]- navel
uiìkpi’ [wiːk˧˩pɪʔ]- cupcake ("weak pit")
manta [mɐ̃nda]- eat
màp [mɐp˩]- sleep

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Pabappa »

That reminds me of Bābā katakana "bass (music)", which becomes tatwana in Poswa and wappana in Pabappa. I know kata means "down, downward" in Bābā but I don't have a sensible answer for where the kana comes from. There are 3 roots spelled kana but none of them make sense. All I can say is that I never ever absoleutely ever make a word just because it's the same as some other word in an Earth language. It might have been been that I created a word like kana "bass" as a fourth homophone initially, and then I (or the Bābā speakers) disambiguated it with the prefix. (The immediate prehistory of this language had tones and aspirated consonants and a few more vowels, so it's not unrealistc to imagine four words coalescing as /kana/ They could be kʰàna, konaʕ, kʰăna, kənə̀ for example.)

A new language Im working on, POP3 (short of Proto-Outer-Poswob language family number 3), has a few near misses right now, such as /oine/ "grape" (which almost certainly will develop into /wine/ in at least one daughter language), /rai/ "rain" (a genitive or plural might add the missing -n), /čaifi/ "cave" ( could perhaps develop into /cave/ , though this is less likely than the others because /c/ is probably going to change to /t/ or /š/ almost everywhere.)
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Matrix »

Southlandic:

Ganj, pronounced [gænd͡ʒ], is the participle of gaa, which means 'know'.
Image

Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Bristel »

Ercunic

son 'stick, beam'
será 'heel'
sent 'path'
salix 'willow' which happens to look and sound exactly like Latin salix 'willow'.
recht 'law'
rent 'thing, matter'
rein 'point, peak'
oil 'all, every, whole'
molt 'ram, wether, vervex, castrated male sheep'
meth 'decay, blight'
men 'young of an animal, kid'
cur 'pointed, protruding'
crumb 'round, curved'
con 'reason, judgement'
corn 'horn'
comber 'confluence of rivers'
colin 'holly tree'
cold 'destruction'
cent 'first'
coil 'omen'
cant 'hundred'
gust 'excellence, force, endurance'
gel 'white, fair, shining, yellow' or 'leech'
gas 'sprig'
gains 'swan'
worn 'fire'
orc 'pork, pig'
ethan 'bird'
bust 'tail, penis'
bun 'owl, bittern'
bon 'foundation, base'
beth 'birch tree'
bath 'death, plague'
ban 'peak, top'
ash 'back'
art 'bear' or 'stone'
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Ryan of Tinellb »

I'm translating "North Wind and the Sun", and have just realised that the Old Ptokan word for breath is this /θis/. It's quite distracting when I'm reading.
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Matrix
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Matrix »

The accusative singular of the Southlandic word for 'basket' is mandong. Do I even need to explain this one?
Image

Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by k1234567890y »

I think I have a bunch of them among my a priori conlangs.

For example, I found that the first and second singular pronouns of the Old Handapachi language of 1500 BK resembles the corresponding pronouns of Yeniseian languages:

1st singular pronoun: ʔad(resembles the first singular pronouns of Yeniseian languages: Ket āˑ~āˑt, Yugh āt, Kott ai, Assan aj, Arin ai, Pumpokol ad)
2nd singular pronoun: ʔaw(resembles the second singular pronouns of Yeniseian languages: Ket ū, Yugh ū, Kott au, Assan au, Arin au, Pumpokol u)
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by YourFace »

In Tsëmi, the word "to be" is esir.
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Imralu »

In Wena, the word swampo | zwambo (women's | men's register) means "lake" or "pond". It could also refer to pooled water in a swamp (although "swamp" itself is puswa | buzwa). It's a complete coincidence though. Swampo basically means "still water".

There's also the now already famous homo, which means "tasty thing".
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Soap »

Imralu wrote:In Wena, the word swampo | zwambo (women's | men's register) means "lake" or "pond". It could also refer to pooled water in a swamp (although "swamp" itself is puswa | buzwa). It's a complete coincidence though. Swampo basically means "still water".

There's also the now already famous homo, which means "tasty thing".
The men/women thing is interesting. Do you have the info online anywhere? Are there vowel changes too, or consonant changes other than voicing differences? From that little snapshot above it looks like I would prefer to speak the language as a woman.

And your post also caught my eye because puswa is the old name of my primary conlang, Poswa. The "Puswa" name was derived from a type of floral-themed skirt their women often wore, and "Poswa" just means "mountain language".
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by zyxw59 »

Dnálori has a nominalizing ending for the experiencer of a state, "-twás/-twos/-tus", the last form of which is identical to a Latin ending forming past participles.

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Imralu »

Soap wrote:The men/women thing is interesting. Do you have the info online anywhere? Are there vowel changes too, or consonant changes other than voicing differences? From that little snapshot above it looks like I would prefer to speak the language as a woman.
I don't have anything online that I'm ready to show everyone, but basically the women's register has [p t k f s] where the men's register has . The allophones [ʃ tʃ] occur in the women's register and of course these are [ʒ dʒ] in the men's register. Basically, in men's speech, only /h/ is voiceless. In women's speech, the vowels, semivowels, nasals and /l/ are voiced and nothing else is. There are no vowel differences, but there are some words that are restricted to one register.
Soap wrote:And your post also caught my eye because puswa is the old name of my primary conlang, Poswa. The "Puswa" name was derived from a type of floral-themed skirt their women often wore, and "Poswa" just means "mountain language".
In Wena, it just comes from pu | bu "land" and swa | zwa "water".
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Zaarin »

One I noticed in my primary conlang Yasholite the other day is dabboʿ /d̪ɑbˈboʕ̞/ "he wants," which sounds similar to the quasi-roulette game "dabo" /dæˈbo/ from Deep Space 9.
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by HerljosScheindorf »

In xerossu , I have in exemple :
adoxiß : "down to the end of the road" , adoxis means "humble" in latin.
asava : "love"/"to be in love"/.. , sounds like "ah, ça va?" in french. (hey, are you fine?)
atzoun : "day light" , sounds like "atchoum" in french, onomatopoeia of sneezing
bushido is the name of one of my letters, but it's not related to Japanese "bushido".
nahuatl means "light" and "huatl" means shadows.
ikotl means "input/ouput control of a system" and it's funny because of "ioctl" in english
katlanogktan means "landing bay area" (for discharging goods from space shuttles), and there is the aztec god of rain "tlanoc", thats makes me think of some kind of cargo cult.
kiȑodh "to grasp with ones hand" sounds like "qui rôdde" (which is wandering) in french
koŕlo means "memories" in Xerossu, and it's close to the thibetan word "khorlo" meaning "wheel"
inanuktzcel means "the fur of clouds" and sounds like "in a nutsheel" in english
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by mèþru »

In Khásoitoi, kux /kuχ/ [koχ] means face. It is taken from Koh the Face Stealer, an Avatar: The Last Airbender character.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Hallow XIII »

By an unfortunate accident of sound change, the Nyipa word for "dog" is porn, cognate to Ntaratu korun of the same meaning.
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Pole, the »

As noted in another thread, Kopoıves word for "to have sex" is reip, which is a pure coincidence.
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Vijay »

Hallow XIII wrote:By an unfortunate accident of sound change, the Nyipa word for "dog" is porn, cognate to Ntaratu korun of the same meaning.
I think there's an Armenian word for 'dog' that looks similar to korun.

EDIT: I was thinking of կորիւն koriwn in Old Armenian meaning 'cub' (I only sort of remember this word because there's a Romani word for 'dog' rikono that also probably comes from this).

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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Soap »

Just a few more from Poswa, mostly due to inflectional forms that I hadnt picked up on while just browsing the dictionary. A lot of them seem to involve the vowel squence /ie/.


bastian "profit, markup on an item sold in a store"
bullies "of the pregnant women"
nobellies "of your ice cream" (it would be cuter if the vowels of the last two were switched, but alas, it cant work)
tempo "calamity, emergency" (used in a placename)

edit: I couldnt resist: pižža "his breast milk" (sic). There is no /z/ in the language, and my use of {ž} is just because I don't want to confuse myself when borrowing words between languages.

Any word ending in -a can take the suffix -ble "slave" and create words like
poppable "harvest slave"
potable "green plant slave"
pipable "kidnapping slave"
possible "cold weather slave" (they said it couldnt be done)
pettable "thorn plant slave" (but put on some gloves first)
pumpable "drill slave"
pimpable "theft slave" (maybe this is how they punish people who can't pay their debts?)

And so on. But this -ble "slave" morpheme is archaic and found mostly in fossilized form. There are many other words for slave. Indeed, probably the only theoretical coinage with -ble worth mentioning is
parable "slaves' slave".

Some more contrived ones:

palliate "mermaids' underwear"
pubbies "social network for ducks and geese"

Can make loads of pseudo-Latin words ending in -ius and -ium such as laftinium "to struggle to eat improperly cooked food" but none that I can find that match a widely known English word.
Last edited by Soap on Tue Sep 27, 2016 9:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Post by Jonlang »

Some from Quebric:

Similar to English words
a I, me
birth heart
con grain
i the
mast food
menú small
question particle
my your
nan end
sel one
tin to dip

Similar to Welsh words
ag with, by (as in done by someone)
caran friend
dalon door
e she, her
gan the numeral 0; none; no; negator
gleren blue
gwe female
gwern husband
gwest gate
gwynad father
lain eight
mae good
medi centre, middle, core
mella girl
mi you
mór stone
nain three
rhewed to stand
ti his, her, its
y and; with/by

There are a lot more Welsh ones than I first thought. Many that look Welsh I had to look up to see if they are actually Welsh words. Many actually aren't but they contain many consonant clusters common in Welsh (gw, gl, gr for instance). There are also a lot of Quebric words containing qu so they're obviously not going to feature in either list.
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