Real cases
A case · you decide
Sibla and the look-alike
Sibla — the false-friend detector in a Spanish class
A classmate writes that English "much" and Spanish "mucho" must be cousins. They look alike and they mean almost the same thing.
They do look like cousins. But "much" goes back to Old English "micel", and "mucho" goes back to Latin "multus".
Linguists trust regular sound correspondences and documented history, not how similar two words look.
So are "much" and "mucho" cousins?
The class adds "much / mucho" to its wall of famous false friends, right beside the real cousins it looked like.
A case · you decide
Grimma and Radix follow the foot
Grimma & Radix — a sound-shift tracker working with the root-finder
Latin "pes, pedis" means foot. Radix wants to know which English word is its inherited cousin.
Grimm's law describes a regular shift in the Germanic languages: an ancient p became f, and d became t. Latin "pater" and English "father" show the same pattern.
Now apply the same law to "ped", one sound at a time.
Which English word is the inherited Germanic cousin of Latin "ped"?
Radix links "foot" and "ped" as inherited cousins and files "pedal" as a borrowing. All three trace back to one ancient root, but "foot" reached English by inheritance, while "pedal" was borrowed from Latin much later.
A case · you decide
Cognata sorts the family, Sibla guards the door
Cognata & Sibla — a 16-year-old building a family tree of words for a linguistics project
Theo's card set has five words: English father, Latin pater, German Vater, Spanish padre and English much. His lab partner wants to add Spanish mucho, because it looks just like much.
Father, pater, Vater and padre descend from one ancestor and differ in the regular ways their languages changed (Latin p where English has f).
Mucho comes from Latin multus. Much comes from Old English mycel. They look alike and mean almost the same thing.
What should Theo do with much and mucho?
Cognata builds the family. Sibla keeps strangers out of it. A good tree needs both.