Spanish Cognates and the False Friends Among Them

On this page, a cognate is a Spanish word related to an English one: either its Wiktionary entry names the English word, or FSI's course lists it as a cognate loan word. A false friend is a pair that looks alike but doesn't share the meaning you'd guess.

Which Spanish words can you guess from English?

FSI's Spanish course is from the 1950s. Its early readings add no new words except what it calls easy and obvious cognate loan words, ones a student can readily guess. Its later units print lists of them before each reading. Here are a few from those lists, with meanings checked in Wiktionary.

In these examples, Spanish -ción lines up with English -tion, -dad with -ty, and -mente with -ly. Treat that as a pattern in this handful of words, not as a rule. No source read for this page states it as one. Use it to recognize a Spanish word, not to build one from English. Run backward, it goes wrong. Actually plus -mente gives actualmente, which means currently, as the false friends section shows. Liberty is libertad, with -tad, and connection is conexión, with no -ción at all.

Say these three. Each Spanish word here has an English cognate that Wiktionary names, and the meaning matches:

• Él es inteligente. (He is smart.)
• Tu traje es igual al mío. (Your suit is the same as mine.) Wiktionary gives igual as cognate with "equal."
• Tom es una buena persona. (Tom is a good person.)

FSI's lists come from a 1950s course with readings on trade and politics, so they lean toward formal words. For everyday words, start with the first 1,000 words.

Which look-alikes changed meaning?

Some Spanish words are related to an English word, by Wiktionary's account, and still mean something else. You'll recognize the shape and guess wrong.

Of the English card senses, Wiktionary's entry for carta lists only a playing card. Check a dictionary before you use carta for any other card.

Say each pair of sentences and hear the difference:

• Tuvieron éxito. (They succeeded.) Against Le mostré la salida. (I showed him the exit.)
• Su discurso es muy largo. (His lecture is very long.) Here largo is about length, not size.
• ¿Dónde está la estación? (Where is the station?) Against Hay cuatro estaciones en un año. (There are four seasons in a year.)

Which pairs does the dictionary call false friends?

Wiktionary's entries for these four Spanish words say outright that they're false friends of the English look-alike. The right column gives a Spanish word that Wiktionary glosses with the English meaning.

Actual. Wiktionary lists "present, current" first, then "factual," "actual, real" and "present-day." So it can overlap with English. One word to watch is the adverb. Actualmente means at present: Actualmente vivo en Boston. (I currently live in Boston.) For "really" or "actually," Wiktionary glosses realmente.

Carpeta. It's a folder, for paper or on a computer: ¿En qué carpeta guardaste el archivo? (In which folder did you save the file?) Wiktionary also lists some regional meanings, among them a lace doily in Colombia and the Río de la Plata area. A carpet is an alfombra, though Wiktionary also lists carpeta for carpet in Louisiana.

Desmayar. With se, it means to faint: Tom se desmayó. (Tom fainted.) There's also a figurative sense, "to dishearten," which is near English "dismay." For "to dismay," Wiktionary glosses consternar.

Grosería. It means rudeness, and in Latin America also a vulgar word: Quedé sorprendido por su grosería. (I was taken aback by his rudeness.) A woman would say sorprendida. Watch the region here. Wiktionary has a second entry, borrowed from English, for a grocery store in Puerto Rico and in the US. Elsewhere, the words differ by country. Wiktionary labels abarrotes for groceries in Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Peru, Chile and several other countries, and lists other words too. Ask the people you'll talk to.

Does embarazada mean embarrassed?

No. Embarazada means pregnant. Wiktionary glosses embarazado as "pregnant," usually in the feminine form, and marks a second meaning, "uncomfortable," as uncommon. It also notes that the verb embarazar gave French a word, and English took that word as "embarrass." So the two are related. The meanings split.

For embarrassed, the word is avergonzado, glossed as "embarrassed, ashamed," so it covers both feelings. Its ending matches the word it describes. In the sentences below, that word is the speaker, so here the ending follows whoever is talking. When it describes something else, it matches that noun instead. Say these two as a woman would: Estoy embarazada. (I am pregnant.) Estoy tan avergonzada. (I'm so embarrassed.) A man who's embarrassed changes only avergonzada to avergonzado: Estoy tan avergonzado. (I'm so embarrassed.) Leave the embarazada sentence as it is. With a man's ending, embarazado still means pregnant. All three use estar, and ser vs estar explains why pregnant takes that verb.

How do you check a look-alike before you say it?

When a Spanish word looks like an English one, check it before you build a sentence on it. These four steps are this site's House routine, not a rule from a source.

1. Read every meaning. The first one may match English and the next ones may not, as with estación.
2. Look for region labels. Grosería changes by place.
3. Find a real sentence. Sentence mining shows where to look.
4. Say it aloud. Then say it cold the next day.

To practice the words on this page, say the sentences out loud and count only that time, in Spoken Minutes. On a 5-minute day, spend 1 minute on yesterday's Cold Say-Back and 4 on the sentences. On a 10-minute day, it's 2 and 8. On a 20-minute day, it's 3, then 10 on the sentences and 7 on swapping your own words into two of them. Put your town in place of Boston in Actualmente vivo en Boston. Put another person's name in place of Tom in Tom se desmayó. Leave the rest of each sentence as it is. Day 1 has nothing to say back yet, so those minutes go to the sentences. The split is this site's House routine, untested with learners. Log the minutes in your Mile Log. If you're just starting, the Spanish starting plan shows where vocabulary fits.

Tomorrow, before you look at anything, do a Cold Say-Back: say "I currently live in" and your town in Spanish, then say what éxito and carpeta mean. Check them against this page.