Hi,
Interesting topic, these 'false cognates' or 'chance similarities', since it is the basis of quite a lot of so-called 'linguistic' work by internet-amateur-linguists (who want to prove a relation between, let's say their own tongue and Sumerian). Also people like Merritt Ruhlen, who wants to prove some long range relations between language families, publishes this kind of false cognates to, erm, substantiate his claims.
One example of a rather ideosyncratic theory: this
article in which a mix of real and false cognates have to substantiate that Anglo-Saxon words have Persian origins. Here is another
example of an amateur linguist (Hebrew and English).
See also: linguist Donald
Ringe (he gives a list of false Quechua & Semitic cognates),
Zompist.
Having said that...
I once had a long list, so this is only a selection of what I could find back.
- French
cantine - Chinese
canting (dining hall). Mind you, the similarity is only due to the Chinese Pinyin!
- English
bad - Persian
bad (same meaning, not related!)
- Korean 'mani' - English 'many'
- English 'much' and Spanish 'mucho' 'much'
- English 'day' and Spanish 'dia' 'day'
- Dutch 'elkaar' 'each other' and Basque 'elkar' 'each other'
- Old English 'habb-' 'have' (or German 'haben') and Latin 'hab-' ('habere') 'have'
- Hungarian 'fiu' 'boy' and Romanian 'fiu' 'son, boy' (?)
- French 'femme' 'woman' and Romanian 'femeie' 'woman' (?)
- German nass 'wet' - Zuni (New Mexico) nas 'wet'
- Rumanian dori 'wish for, desire' - Lau (Austronesian) dori 'wish for,desire'
- Latin 'deus' god – Cl. Greek 'theos' god (!)
[
Edit: more examples
here]
Groetjes,
Frank
