COGNATES

A cognate is something that is considered the same or similar. When we talk about Spanish cognates then, we are referring to words that are the same or very similar to their English counterparts.

We have already indirectly mentioned cognates back in POST #52 where we took a look at false friends. These are words that would lead us to believe that they are indeed cognates; yet are not. So today we are going to take a closer look at both identical and non-identical cognates and learn some simple rules which can help us form non-identical cognates based on the English words we already know.

Identical cognates
Some Spanish cognates are identical to English. This is great news, as it means we stand a good chance of recognising the meaning of these words immediately. In fact, with the exception of “actual” which means current or present-day in Spanish and real or effective in English, I can’t think of an identically spelt word that turns out to be a false friend. Even with this example the meaning is extremely similar, thus we can deem it a cognate.

However, even though there are plenty of identically spelt cognates, we must always remember their pronunciation in Spanish will almost certainly be a little different. Take “ideal” for example and take a moment to consider how we should pronoun this word in both English and Spanish, and we soon realise how different that can sound. Certainly with identical cognates, the sticking point usually originates around a mispronunciation of the word and not its meaning.

The following is a short list of some identical cognates: actual, alcohol, casual, cereal, digital, doctor, escape, funeral, horrible, hospital, hotel, ideal, inevitable, metro, motor, original, perpendicular, plural, rural, similar, singular, sociable, solar, temporal, tropical, vital, visa, vulgar.

Infinitive verb cognates
Spanish verb cognates tend to be fairly easy to recognise when we consider the infinitive forms, remembering that Spanish infinites must end in either -ar, -er or -ir.

Many infinitives in English and Spanish are identical but with these additional endings (most commonly in -ar verbs, and some -ir verbs). Let’s see a few examples:

English	Spanish
(to) abandon	abandonar
(to) calm	calmar
(to) cancel	cancelar
(to) convert	convertir
(to) insist	insistir
(to) limit	limitar
(to) present	presentar
(to) represent	representar

Of course, once the verbs are conjugated then the similarities tend to be less obvious, but knowing that there are plenty of infinitives that are almost identical can be a great help.

Cognates ending in -o
This continues to be a running joke between my English and Spanish speaking friends, that we can take almost any English word and simply append an -o to the end to create the Spanish version. Sadly though, it is not that simple, but it does appear to work with a surprising number of nouns and adjectives.

Whilst there is no single rule that tells us when we should append or change an ending into an -o, English words that end in -ic, -ct, -ism, -ment and -id typically will change to end in -ico, -cto, -ismo, -mento and -ido respectively in Spanish. Let’s see a few different examples of these and other cognates ending in -o.

English	Spanish
academic	académico
artistic	artístico
dynamic	dinámico
lunatic	lunático
romantic	romántico
act	acto
contract	contacto
direct	directo
exact	exacto
perfect	perfecto
idealism	idealismo
organism	organismo
argument	argumento
document	documento
moment	momento
acid	ácido
fluid	fluido
rapid	rápido
timid	tímido
bank	banco
ocean	océano
car	carro

Notice that in some of the above examples, not only do these endings change to incorporate endings in -o but also that there are, at times, some subtle spelling changes and/or accents over vowels.

Changing -tion endings to -ción

English	Spanish
acceleration	aceleración
action	acción
classification	clasificación
definition	definición
function	función
tradition	tradición

Changing -nt endings to -nte

English	Spanish
agent	agente
constant	constante
distant	distante
efficient	eficiente
elephant	elefante
president	presidente
tolerant	tolerante
urgent	urgente

Changing -nce endings to -ncia

English	Spanish
abundance	abundancia
ambulance	ambulancia
distance	distancia
importance	importancia
independence	independencia
tolerance	tolerancia

Changing -ity endings to -idad

English	Spanish
activity	actividad
community	comunidad
electricity	electricidad
generosity	generosidad
nationality	nacionalidad
necessity	necesidad
university	universidad
velocity	velocidad

Changing -ous endings to -oso

English	Spanish
ambitious	ambicioso
curious	curioso
famous	famoso
mysterious	misterioso
nervous	nervioso
numerous	numeroso

Changing -y endings to -ía

English	Spanish
academy	academía
astronomy	astronomía
battery	batería
company	compañía
energy	energía
family	familia
photography	fotografía
urgency	urgencia

Changing -ly endings to -mente

English	Spanish
absolutely	absolutamente
correctly	correctamente
naturally	naturalmente
normally	normalmente
recently	recientemente
totally	totalmente

Spelling differences
Whilst we’ve mainly focused today on how to form cognates based on changing the endings, we should also keep a keen eye out for those subtle spelling changes. For instance, with the exception of rr and ll which are considered letters in their own right, Spanish words almost never have a double consonant.

Typically, English words containing the letter y change to use an i in the Spanish version.

Accents over vowels are also commonplace and are used to maintain the point at where we should stress the word.

Conclusion | En conclusión
Cognates are a fantastic way for us to expand our Spanish vocabulary very quickly. There are literally hundreds of words we already know in Spanish by virtue of knowing their English counterparts.

By following a few simple rules as to forming their endings correctly, we can very quickly find that we are able correctly use and understand some really very advanced and nuanced words with little or no effort at all.

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