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ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 2, No. 7, pp. 1477-1484, July 2012 © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.2.7.1477-1484

Comparative Investigation of Persian's Cognates and False Friends with Some IE Languages
Mohammad R. Talebinejad
Islamic Azad University, Shahreza Branch, Iran Email: rtalebinezhad@yahoo.com

Abolhassan NazariSarmazeh
Islamic Azad University, Shahreza Branch, Esfahan, Iran Email: Abolhassan.nazari@gmail.com
Abstract—This study aims at identifying a kind of cognate words which are called false or true cognates in Persian and some IE Languages. False cognates are words which have the same form and pronunciation in two or more languages, but despite their similarity in form, and pronunciation they havedissimilar meanings in the two languages. True cognates are the result of kinship relations across languages, or borrowings. False and true cognates might be found in nearly all languages with any kind of relation to other languages. There are still some "real" cognates found in the lexicon of Persian and some IE languages. By document reviewing much interesting information has been revealed. Theconclusions of this study will provide new insights into the linguistic and the communication problems derived from a misuse of these lexical items. The study of false friends and true Cognates has several implications for contrastive analysts, error analysts, translators, foreign language teachers and learners, curriculum designers, as well as lexicographers and lexicologists. Index Terms—falsefriends, true cognate, IE languages, dissimilar meaning

I. INTRODUCTION A. The Place of Persian among the Families of Languages Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Indo-European is one of the most widely spoken and diverse families of languages in the world today. It includes, among others, the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Latin, etc.), the Slavic languages (Russian,Polish, etc.), the Germanic languages (English, German, Swedish, etc.), the Celtic languages, Baltic languages, Greek, Armenian, and Albanian. All of these languages, as well as some extinct languages like Tocharian and Illyrian, are thought to originate with a single prehistoric language called Proto-IndoEuropean, which was spoken between 3000 and 5000 years ago. The branch of Indo-European thatPersian belongs to is known as the Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan branch. It includes both the Indic languages (Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, etc.) spoken in northern India today and the Iranian or (also called Aryan) languages. Persian is the most widely spoken of the Iranian languages today. Other modern-day Iranian languages include Pashto, which is spoken in much of Afghanistan; Tajik, spoken inTajikistan; and Kurdish, which is spoken in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. There are also several Iranian languages spoken by certain tribes in Iran such as Luri, Baluchi, and Tat. In the past, there were other Iranian languages such as Avestan, the language of the Avesta, a sacred text of the Zoroastrian religion, which was the dominant religion in Iran before the Islamicconquest. Persian has undergone many changes in the past two millennia, the most significant of which has most certainly been the influence of Arabic since the Islamic conquest of Persia in the year 650. Over the years, Persian has borrowed up to half of its vocabulary from Arabic as well as certain grammatical elements. This impact of Arabic is profound not only because of its magnitude but because thesounds and syntax of Arabic, a Semitic language, are so different than those of Persian. Since the Middle Ages, Persian has been written in a modified form of the Arabic alphabet, although in pre-Islamic times it was written in an older alphabet known as Pahlavi. Words are the elements of a language used to identify objects, ideas and express feelings. These words are also the mirrors in that...