The Spanish that you Already Know
There is a lot you already know when you start learning Spanish, even if you haven’t studied it before.
First of all, languages are not isolated things. Each language has commonalities with other languages. They are all part of a family and influence each other, so it is very likely you will find common structures and words in a foreign language that are similar to your mother language.
This is true for all languages of the same family, like Spanish with Italian or French (Romance languages) but also with languages from different families, like Spanish and English (Germanic language).
What do Spanish and English have in common? Well, for starters, a lot of words (some of which I will share with you in this blog post and in the video below). Also, there are some similar structures in English and Spanish that are very useful.
Spanish Cognates
- chocolate – ‘chocolate’
- decisión – ‘decision’
- esencial – ‘essential’
- familiar – ‘familiar’
- final – ‘final’
- fundamental – ‘fundamental’
- global – ‘global’
- inevitable – ‘inevitable’
- informal – ‘informal’
- interminable – ‘interminable’
- horrible – ‘horrible’
- hospital – ‘hospital’
- literal – ‘literal’
- normal – ‘normal’
- particular – ‘particular’
- personal – ‘personal’
- popular – ‘popular’
- probable – ‘probable’
- radical – ‘radical’
- ritual – ‘ritual’
- similar – ‘similar’
- simple – ‘simple’
- social – ‘social’
- vulnerable – ‘vulnerable’
- terrible – ‘terrible’
