Cognates

The process we have just used to establish a possible family connection between different languages involved looking at what are called “cognates.” Within groups of related languages, we can often find close similarities in particular sets of words. A cognate of a word in one language (e.g. English) is a word in another language (e.g. German) that has a similar form and is or was used with a similar meaning. The English words mother, father and friend are cognates of the German words Mutter, Vater and Freund. On the basis of these cognates, we would imagine that Modern English and Modern German probably have a common ancestor in what has been labeled the Germanic branch of Indo-European. By the same process, we can look at similar sets in Spanish (madre, padre, amigo) and Italian (madre, padre, amico) and conclude that these cognates are good evidence of a common ancestor in the Italic branch of Indo-European.