A focus on the English and Romanian lexicons: The case of cognates

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v9i2.28703

Keywords:

deceptive cognates, lexicology, partial cognates, cognates proper, semantics

Abstract

In terms of language acquisition and use, cognates are linguistic elements that pose difficulties for language learners and are an essential theoretical category to include in teaching processes. Through a qualitative descriptive approach, this article defines and illustrates the various types of cognates and proposes a classification of cognates into three categories (proper, partial, and deceptive), exemplifying the linguistic concept by focusing on two languages: English, a Germanic language, and Romanian, a Romance language, through targeted sampling. This article precedes an applied linguistics study on the challenges posed by deceptive cognates, particularly in the field of translation, as identified in the TERRA corpus (Translation Error Analysis).

Author Biography

Raluca-Andreea Petruș, West University of Timișoara, Romania

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6482-4189

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/HLH-7146-2023

https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=58844737900

Raluca-Andreea Petruș, PhD, is a Junior Lecturer at the West University of Timișoara (WUT), Romania, and has been a co-editor of the two academic journals, Gender Studies and the Romanian Journal of English Studies, WUT, since December 2023. She received a Ph.D. in Philology (Japanese American Incarceration Literature) in 2023 from the West University of Timișoara, Romania. She is a member of three research centres based at the Faculty of Letters, History, Philosophy, and Theology: the American Studies Centre (CSAM), the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (CISG), and CODHUS (Corpus Related Digital Approaches to Humanities Centre), and has been a Salzburg Research Fellow since September 2024. She is the author of Civil Rights and Identity in Japanese American Incarceration Literature, published in 2026 by Editura Universității de Vest, Timișoara.

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Published

2026-05-15

How to Cite

Petruș, R.-A. (2026). A focus on the English and Romanian lexicons: The case of cognates. Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies, 9(2), 229–242. https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v9i2.28703