Imagine moving to a country where you do not speak the language, and most people there don’t speak yours. You would need to find a way to put a roof over your head, buy food, get around town, and make new friends. Maybe you have already experienced this situation. If you have, think back to how you and your family got around in the early days. If you haven't experienced this situation, how would you get around?

One thing you could do is figure out what is similar about your home country and your new country. For example, in the United States, stop signs look like the sign on the left, while in Mexico, stop signs look like the sign on the right.

A graphic of a STOP sign. The sign is an octagon with the word in the middle

Source: MUTCD R1-1, Wikipedia

A graphic of a STOP sign only this one is in Spanish and features the word ALTO in the middle of the octagon

Source: Alto stop sign, MagicImage, Wikipedia

The signs share the same shape and color, so if you only speak English, you can still understand that the sign on the right means “stop.”

A photograph of two Spanish English brochures. One is Problem: Problema and the other is Solution: Solución.

Source: Problem-Solution, hotdiggitydogs, Flickr

You could also compare your home language to the new language and see if any words are similar. This is much easier when the two languages share a linguistic history. Such languages have words known as cognates. Cognates are words from different languages that have similar spellings, pronunciations, and meanings. For example, the word “accident” in English is very similar to the word “accidente” in Spanish. The spelling and pronunciation of both words are similar.

Let’s take a look at a few cognates that are spelled exactly the same in English as they are in Spanish.

animal hotel decimal hospital metal

Now, let’s take a look at a few cognates that are spelled almost the same in English as they are in Spanish.

EnglishSpanish
dinosaur dinosario
human humano
evidence evidencia
bicycle bicicleta
family familia

A poster from Spain that advertises the following: Festival de cine Africano Tarifa del 21 al 29 de mayo 2010.

Source: TARIFA // APPEL A CANDIDATURE // CALL FOR ENTRIES, Festival de Cine Africano de Cordoba, Flickr

From looking at these lists, you might conclude that you know more English or Spanish than you thought. In fact, there are about 20,000 Spanish-English cognates.

Let’s take a minute to look at some cognates that English shares with French and German. The following are just a few of the many French-English cognates:

A photograph of the cover of the children’s book The Little Prince in French. The French title reads Le Petit Prince.

Source: Le Petit Prince, spike55151, Flickr


A graphic of the popular children's book character Maisy the Mouse. She is surrounded by nine different representations of her name in various languages.

Source: A United Nations of Maisy, Steve Bowbrick, Flickr

EnglishFrench
blond blond
cruel cruel
modern moderne
carrot carotte
question question
criminal criminel
doctor docteur
anniversary anniversaire
ordinary ordinaire
accident accident
fruit fruit
soup soupe
apartment appartement
tiger tigre

Now, look over a few German-English cognates.

A photograph of the cover of the children’s book The Little Prince in German. The German title reads Der Kleine Prinz.

Source: Der Kleine Prinz, spike55151, Flickr

EnglishGerman*
alarm Alarm
oval Oval
alphabet Alphabet
algebra Algebra
auto Auto
atlas Atlas
frost Frost
ball Ball
garden Garten
broccoli Broccoli
milk Milch
fat fett

*Note: All nouns in German are capitalized.


In this lesson, you will concentrate on Spanish cognates to help enrich both your English and Spanish vocabularies. You will also learn about false cognates, that is, words that seem like cognates but aren’t.