Have you noticed any surprising similarities between "unrelated" languages?

[nooj]

Word for apple in Korean: 사과 /sagwa/
Word for apple in Basque: sagarra

A Korean lady living in Donostia pointed this out.

[devilyoudont]

There's enough random links between Turkish and Japanese that a language family was proposed (Altaic). However, this language family is largely seen as discredited today, because actually, modern forms of the languages are more similar to one another than older forms of the languages. It is possible that these similarities are due to a sprachbund

The only random thing I've stumbled across between Japanese and Spanish so far:

見る(miru) (see, look, watch, etc) and mirar (look watch)

With Japanese and Esperanto, it's happened that a lot of grammatical features of Esperanto which are considered difficult for English speakers... I already had high familiarity with because of similar structures existing in Japanese.

[M23]

While studying German I keep getting surprised by things every now and then being more similar to Spanish than English. For example, the words for a necktie:

German: Krawatte
Spanish: Corbata

[kulaputra]

Another probable wanderwort: English "mead," Spanish "miel" (and various other IE cognates), and Chinese mì. All from a PIE root meaning "honey."

Chinese "taifeng" and English "typhoon," which is from Greek and not Chinese.

Indian (that is, many/most major languages of India) "sant" (or variations of that) and European "saint/santo/etc." The former is from Proto-Indo-European *h₁sónts ("being," as in the present participle of "be") while the latter is from *seh₂k- (“to sanctify, to make a treaty”).

[DaisyMaisy]

One of my favorite language related quotes, from William Jones, who noticed surprising similarities between "unrelated" languages:

Nevertheless, Jones' third annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (delivered on 2 February 1786 and published in 1788) with the famed "philologer" passage is often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies.[13]

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.

[StringerBell]

Just today I was thinking about how learning how to roll the letter "R" in one language has directly helped me with my pronunciation in the other language because both Polish and Italian have similar "R" sounds (again, English is the odd man out). I wonder how many other languages have a similar rolled "R" sound (besides Spanish, obviously).

[NoManches]

When I saw this post I instantly thought about Spanish and Arabic...but I don't think it applies because they aren't so "unrelated" after all.

A few examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOe4mkzBdCs

[NoManches]

When I saw this post I instantly thought about Spanish and Arabic...but I don't think it applies because they aren't so "unrelated" after all.

A few examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOe4mkzBdCs

Spanish and Arabic are unrelated, but if you believe in the theory of Nostratic macrofamily, they may be distantly related.

However, many of the words in that video are recent loanwords from European languages (like pantaloon and blouse).

The only word I don't know its origin is "camisa". It's definitely not a recent loanword, because it's found in ancient Arabic documents including the Quran itself, but as far as I know, there are no equivalents in other semitic languages. Most etymologists say it's from the same Germanic source of the word "hemd". For some reason I find it difficult to accept this etymology.

Cool! Never knew that, thanks for pointing that out.

[Axon]

All kinds. I'm the type of person who likes to fit things into "slots" or "types" in my mind, but I also have a very high tolerance for ambiguity and fuzzy definitions.

That means I can make tons of tenuous links between languages even if they share only the barest of resemblances.

Just off the top of my head:
Dutch mooi sounds kinda like Mandarin mei3.
The way German can make long adjective clauses works a lot like Mandarin: Das letztendlich verkaufte Restaurant / 一家刚卖的餐厅
The Indonesian word yang is tricky to explain to foreigners who don't have an equivalent - lucky for me, it's virtually identical to English that/which/who.
The Hungarian word for woman, nő looks vaguely like the Mandarin word for female, nü3.
The English interjection maaaaan.... with a low falling intonation, expressing vague disappointment or wonder, can be transplanted directly into Yunnanese by simply dropping the final -n.

[Jaleel10]

I always find it fascinating that the word 'right', meaning: (1) the direction and (2) legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement is the same in many languages.

Afrikaans:Jy het nie die reg om hier te wees nie. Draai asseblief regs.
English: You do not have the right to be here. Please turn right.
Spanish: No tienes derecho a estar aquí. Por favor, gira a la derecha.

(I don't speak the following languages. Pulled sentences from reverso contexto)
French: Vous n'avez pas le droit d'être ici. Tournez à droite, s'il vous plaît.
Polish: Nie mają państwo prawa być tutaj obecni. Proszę skręcić w prawo.

Anybody know the reason why?