Are you studying Spanish? How many words of Spanish do you think you know? Or if you speak Spanish and you’re studying English think about how many words you have in your English vocabulary.
OK, now add at least a few hundred to that. Maybe even a few thousand. If you know English you also automatically know a lot of Spanish and vice versa. Words like similar, animal, terrible and color differ only in pronunciation. Words like affect – afectar, diary – diario, correct – correcto and competence – competencia also have different endings but the base of the word is the same. Words that have the same linguistic ancestor are called cognates (cognados) and they are language learners’ friends.
Here is a ready-to-print list of frequently used English – Spanish Cognates.
For hundreds of more cognates and some rules that they follow check out these websites:
