#false cognates

Also, despite being able to reason out the road signs from context and a decent knowledge of both Latin and Spanish, technically I speak no French, so every road sign was an opportunity for a Homer Simpson making the barbecue and only having the French instructions joke.

I just found out the japanese for "cookie cutter" is クッキー型（kukkī kata）. The kanji used here, 型 (kata) means "shape" or "form", and seems to come from an older word, 型抜き/抜き型 (shaped cutter/punch), which means that 型 is completely unrelated to "cutter" etymologically (a false cognate). It's just a coincidence that クッキー型 sounds almost identical to "cookie cutter"!

The Urdu/Persian word "behtar" and the English word "better" have the same meaning so I thought they might have the same origin but apparently they don't.

you know what's fucked up?

difference between false cognates and false friends:

Tempo, temporary, temporal and (verb) tense all stem from Latin tempus 'time'. Tempus resembles time, but looks are deceiving: these words are not etymologically related. Time is distantly related to tide, the English cognate of German Zeit and Dutch tijd. These continental words still mean 'time', whereas the meaning of tide was narrowed. Here's more.