Thomas R Jefferys wrote:

a Japanese friend of mine told me about "baka",,, Oh man! So, Akane's
favorite epithet has an interesting fouble message for us Spanish
speakers.

I suspect the post was a result of just noticing this amusing false
cognate (Gee, I've been waiting years for a chance to use that in normal
(so to speak) conversation ^_~), or boredom, or both.

save that it doesn't mean "cow", it means "fool", "moron", "idiot", ect.
and generally, the quality of stupidity.

It's characters are "horse" and soemthing like "lavatory" (not sure), ie,
horse-butt.

It's not even a false cognate. In order to be a cognate at all, the
different words have to actually _mean_ much the same thing. "baka"(J) and
"baca"(S) don't.

"Mist" in English means a fine spray of water.
"Mist" in German means animal dung.

They sound the same, but they are not cognates by any means.

                           ---------------------

They are false cognates. You are right that cognates are words that
sound the same and mean nearlt the same things. False cognates are words
that sound alike and thus mught fool one into believing that they are
cognates. The two words sound very similar and have different meanings
(although many who grew up in ranch land might argue that cow and
fool/stupid are not all that far apart.) I was not implying that baka
meant cow, but that it has a similar sound to vaca and thus can be said
to be a verbal (although not a written) false cognate. Sigh. I got the
definition of false cognate pounded into my head repeatedly by a
deceptively jovial French prof and by a particularly enthusiastic Old
English prof. Since then I've developed a habit of noting them whenever
I go after a new language (Hebrew and Japanese are next on my list).

Sorry for the spam

C-chan