Re: a weird question...

On Wed, 15 Sep 1999 21:10:52 PDT, Danny Wier <dawier@...> wrote:

>Hey, has this happened to anybody?
>
>I made up words for a theoretical conlang (just making up words at =
random),
>and came up with this once:
>
>I invented the word _kanzi_ for 'girl, young woman, maiden' -- and it =
turns
>out the word for 'unmarried woman' in Malayalam is _kan"n"i_ (n" =3D =
alveolar
>n).  Also, I came up with the expletive _chort_ "bloody hell, etc.", =
which
>happens to be the Russian word for 'devil'.  I also came up with _kane_
>'dog' (compare Italian _cane_), but I think I was influenced on that one
>somewheres...
Olaetyan has "venn" as a word for "friend" (the more usual word is
"tseko"), which coincidentally is "friend" in Norwegian. I remember that
when I was putting together the vocabulary for Zharranh, I generated a =
long
list of potential Zharranh words by hand, and randomly assigned meanings =
to
them; by chance, some of these happened to resemble a word from a =
familiar
language with a similar meaning.

>This is just a few instances of some conincidences.  What would be a =
good
>word for this phenomenon?
It seems like there ought to be a word, but I can't think of one. I'd
probably use "chance resemblance" or "coincidental similarity".

--=20
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin