There is a table of examples in the link. Some I saw include:
Desert
- desert Latin dēserō (“to abandon”) << ultimately PIE **seh₁- (“to sow”)
- Ancient Egyptian: Deshret (refers to the land not flooded by the Nile) from dšr (red)
Shark
- shark Middle English shark from uncertain origin
- Chinese 鲨 (shā) Named as its crude skin similar to sand (沙 (shā))
Kayak
- Inuktitut ᖃᔭᖅ (kayak) Proto-Eskimo *qyaq
- Turkish kayık (‘small boat’)[17] Old Turkic kayguk << Proto-Turkic kay- (“to slide, to turn”)
A lot of these could be TIL posts of their own.
I also wonder if some of these are actually false cognates, or if there is a much earlier common origin with false associations that came afterwards
Sorry! I have a tendency to shift to technical vocab midtext, so it’s likely my fault.
I’ll use the comment to clarify some terms:
If anything else is unclear feel free to ask away!
Danke 💕 I was half asleep reading it as well, that might not have helped.
I’m not really gifted, language wise, but I’m pretty interested. I love watching this one YouTuber of which which I forgot (Brit which seems to live in Germany, explaining things like the great vowel shift (aha, remembered! https://youtu.be/fmL6FClRC_s) and I’m fascinated by the similarities of old English and modern German. But I won’t ever be able to keep things like those “For example /t͡ʃ/ is as in ⟨chill⟩, /θ/ is as in ⟨think⟩, /kʷ/ is as in ⟨queen⟩ but Latin handles it as a single unit, etc.” in memory.
I understand it as I’m reading, but it’ll be gone tomorrow. Washed away by some algorithm in trying to get working.
But thank you so much, it was a pleasure reading 💖