What is a cognate?
A cognate is a word that is similar in two different languages. They are derived from the same root. They may look exactly the same or slightly different, but they are spelled similarly and mean the same thing.
How does it help you learn a new language?
If you already know what the word means in your native tongue, it is easy to guess what it means in the target language. For example the word agenda is the same in English and Spanish, although the pronunciation is slightly different. There are about 1000 words that are the same or similar between English and Spanish. That is an impressive number of vocabulary words to start out knowing!
| English | Spanish |
|---|---|
| cable | cable |
| chocolate | chocolate |
| irregular | irregular |
| pastor | pastor |
| tropical | tropical |
Just add an "-o"
Have you ever met someone who is trying to speak Spanish and they just add "-o" to the end of every word? It always makes me laugh when this happens on TV. This is kind of where it comes from. Check out these words:
| English | Spanish |
|---|---|
| anniversary | aniversario |
| artistic | artistico |
| electronic | electronico |
| glorious | glorioso |
| perfect | perfecto |
| precious | precioso |
| primary | primario |
| vocabulary | vocabulario |
Watch Out for the False Cognates Though!
False cognates are words that you look at and think you know the meaning of them, but you have to watch out because they really don't mean what you think! Here are some examples you may hear:
| English | Spanish |
|---|---|
| pregnant | embarazada |
| embarrassed | vergüenza |
| to annoy | molestar |
| to remind | recordar |
| to record | grabar |
| success | éxito |
Check out this website for a downloadable list of 1001 cognates!
Panama Trivia
“A man, a plan, a canal; Panama.” is a palindrome. (A palindrome is a word, number or phrase that's the same backwards and forwards.)
Tuesday Tarea will be brought to you here every Tuesday by A Panama Mama. (Tarea means "homework" in Spanish.)
Check back each week for videos, lessons, poems and much more that will encourage you to explore and learn Spanish!
If you would like to share your thoughts on Spanish, feel free to in the comments.
Gracias por visitarme. Hasta luego.
It's easy to forget how close English is to romance and germanic languages - there are so many moments where I'm convinced I know what the other person is saying despite not knowing the other language. But yeah those false cognates is what'll get ya!
Also, nice post - clear and well organized!
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Thanks for the comment! :) Yeah it's so weird how the languages are close but not at all. Like in college I took French and I wanted to pronounce everything like in Spanish. My husband took German in high school and wants to pronounce a lot of Spanish words in German. Too funny! :)
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I took French for a huge chunk of my childhood, then learned a little German in college - I found that my sentences would end up being some strange mishmash of German/French/English and it was terrible. lol!! I found my dreams would be like that too, weirdly enough!
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Lol! That is totally crazy, but it makes a lot of sense. I used to translate in Mexico. Once, when my parents were in visiting, I was talking to someone in Spanish and then started telling my parents, in Spanish, what the guy said in Spanish. My parents speak no Spanish and just looked at me like I was crazy. It is funny how our brains work!
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I tuned into a Spanish radio station yesterday and I was surprised how much of the broadcast I either understood or could figure out. I don't think I could speak the language, but if exposed to it every day I wonder how long it would be before I understood it enough to communicate. @ironshield
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Yes, it is way easier to understand before speaking. Just like with a baby. How long do they listen to their native tongue before they actually produce a word. Then the words form together to make a phrase or two. It's still hard to understand my 4 year old some days and he's been listening to English his whole life! ;) My husband is doing way better at understanding when people talk to him in Spanish and he can usually get his point across (7 months here), but I'm usually still around to help with translation and understanding. :)
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Wow, thanks for the great info. I learned a lot of Spanish in grade school through high school. I lived in El Paso, Tx. Then in college I took 2 semesters. I moved to a different university and had to take 3 semester of French which kind of messed up my Spanish. Fast forward to today and I have been trying to brush up on my Spanish and improve both in how I can speak, write and read it! My goal is to be able to speak and read it much better in about a year from now. It just seems a shame to not be able to speak it when I live in Texas where there are a lot of Spanish speakers!
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I forgot where you lived! :) Good fun! Yeah, before we moved here, we should have worked more on our Spanish ... or attended a Spanish church in the area! Hopefully you can accomplish your goal of improving! I really love Spanish, but sometimes it's hard to just jump out there and speak it...mistakes and all! :)
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