Cognates in Spanish and how to learn from them

Did you know that English and Spanish share 10,000 to 15,000 cognates? That means that you already know the meaning of around 10,000 to 15,000 words in Spanish! ¡Qué fascinante! (You might recognize the Spanish word fascinante, which means fascinating in English!)

But… what is a cognate anyway? And how can recognizing cognates help you communicate in Spanish? Read on for tips for using cognates to boost your vocabulary!

In this post:

• What is a cognate?
• How can cognates help me learn?
• Patterns in Spanish cognates
• Examples of cognates in Spanish and English

What is a cognate?

The word cognate can have two different meanings, depending on who you ask!

In its strictest sense, cognates are words in related languages that descended from the same word in a parent language. For example, Spanish and French both descended from Latin, and ocho and huit (both meaning eight) are cognates, since they both came from the Latin word octo—even though ocho and huit don’t look or sound anything alike!

However, when we talk about cognates in terms of language learning, we usually mean something a little different: In general, a cognate is a word that looks similar in two languages and has similar meanings in both. It might be the result of the two languages being related, or it might be because one language borrowed a word from another. English has borrowed many words from French, which is one reason why we find so many similar words in English and Spanish!

In this post, we’ll focus on the second meaning of cognate, and talk about words with similar spelling and meaning, regardless of whether they were borrowed into one of the languages.

How can cognates help me learn?

Cognates are a fantastic tool for increasing your vocabulary, especially in languages that share as many as Spanish and English do. Since they have the same meaning in both languages, learning to recognize them is like getting a better vocabulary in your new language for free!

While some cognates are easy to recognize, others rely on knowing certain patterns—and some lookalike words don’t mean the same thing at all!

Perfect cognates
Some words are spelled exactly the same in both languages, and have the same meaning! These include:

• animal
  and
  animal
• chocolate
  and
  chocolate
• error
  and
  error

Near-perfect cognates
These Spanish words share enough letters that you could probably guess their meaning without seeing the English translation, but they aren’t identical:

• family
  and
  familia
• dinosaur
  and
  dinosaurio
• telephone
  and
  teléfono

False cognates
These words look similar but don’t mean the same thing. (They’re also sometimes called false friends.) One of the most infamous examples is embarazada: It means pregnant, not embarrassed! Other false cognates include:

• assist
  and
  asistir
  (to attend, like a class or a baseball game)
• exit
  and
  éxito
  (éxito means success)
• rope
  and
  ropa
  (ropa means clothing)

Patterns in Spanish cognates

Sometimes, a word doesn’t look like a cognate until you’ve learned to recognize some common patterns in the differences between Spanish and English. Learning these will help expand your vocabulary even more!

English ‑tion and Spanish ‑ción
This is one of the most common categories of cognates you’ll find! Examples include:

• information
  and
  información
• direction
  and
  dirección

English ‑ty and Spanish ‑dad or ‑tad
Many words that end in ‑ty in English came to us from French, which is why they’re still so similar to their Spanish counterparts. (They’re also almost always feminine in Spanish!) They include:

• necessity
  and
  necesidad
• liberty
  and
  libertad

English ‑ous and Spanish ‑oso
Some of the most common examples of this pattern include:

• famous
  and
  famoso
• generous
  and
  generoso
• ambitious
  and
  ambicioso
  (notice that the “t” in English changes to a “c” in Spanish, similar to the ‑tion/‑ción change above!)

English s‑ followed by a consonant and Spanish es‑ followed by a consonant
This pattern might be one of the most surprising, but it’s also one of the most helpful to know! Examples include:

• special
  and
  especial
• stomach
  and
  estómago
• scandal
  and
  escándalo

Some of the first Spanish words you’re likely to learn—although they aren’t perfect cognates—look much more like the English word when we remove the “e” that comes before two consonants: escuela (school) and español (Spanish)!

English ‑ly and Spanish ‑mente
This pattern is also less obvious, but many adverbs in English and Spanish look much more similar if you swap the ‑ly for ‑mente! Here are a few:

• exactly
  and
  exactamente
• finally
  and
  finalmente
• probably
  and
  probablemente

English ‑ic and Spanish ‑ico
You’ve probably already noticed that Spanish words tend to end in a vowel more often than English words do. That’s also the case with this pattern:

• panic
  and
  pánico
• basic
  and
  básico

English ‑ant or ‑ent and Spanish ‑ante or ‑ente
Similar to the ‑ic/‑ico pattern, these Spanish words ending in ‑ante or ‑ente are often identical to their English translation if you drop the final vowel! For example:

• restaurant
  and
  restaurante
• accident
  and
  accidente

Examples of cognates in Spanish and English

Since cognates have similar meanings and are pronounced similarly, English speakers might be able to guess the meanings of these Spanish words—even if you’ve never learned them before! (Check the end of this post for their translations.)

Improve your vocabulario, one cognate at a time!

Understanding cognates and the common patterns behind them can help you feel more comfortable and confident in Spanish, whether you’re a new learner starting out or an advanced learner looking to level up your skills.

For more tips and tricks in Spanish, check out these posts:

• How to use “-ito” and “-ita”: Your guide to Spanish diminutives
• Your guide to the Spanish alphabet
• Demonstrative adjectives in Spanish: how to use “este,” “esta,” and all the others
• How Spanish accent marks can improve your pronunciation
• 4 Spanish phrases that make it easier to communicate

Cognates in Spanish and English