Word Borrowing

Now you can better appreciate why linguists use cognates to analyze the historical relationship between languages. Cognates can be used as modern "clues" to the past and the potential historical relationships of two or more languages. If two languages share a great number of cognates, it is often good evidence that the languages developed from a common ancestral language. For example, European scholars have long known of the importance of Latin as the historical "root" language for the so-called "Romance Languages" (e.g., Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc.). The Romance languages share a great number of cognates owing to their common Latin origin.

(Note: An important note of caution, however, is that any analysis of cognates should use basic words that we would expect to find in all languages historically; doing so cuts down on the risk that a particular word has been borrowed into many different languages. (For example, one wonders how many languages have borrowed the word "Internet" to explain this new technology!!) Words more basic to a vocabulary of a particular people (e.g., hand, mother, sky, etc.), are less likely to be borrowed from outside languages. As a result, if two languages share a large number of cognates, the similarities are more likely to be a product of the past historical relationship between the languages.)