What are some examples of Spanish false cognates?
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What are some examples of Spanish false cognates?
20 False Spanish Cognates That Could Get You in Trouble
- Embarazada. What it looks like: Embarrassed.
- Éxito. What it looks like: Exit.
- Molestar. What it looks like: Molest.
- Constipación. What it looks like: Constipation.
- Fábrica. What it looks like: Fabric.
- Sopa. What it looks like: Soap.
- Realizar. What it looks like: Realize.
- Pie.
In fact, there’s almost 90\% lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese! That means 9 out of 10 words are similar and have a cognate in the other language. Cognates are words that look and sound similar in both languages because of a common origin.
What are some examples of Spanish cognates?
The easiest Spanish cognates to recognize are exactly the same in English. However, the Spanish pronunciation of the word is usually slightly different than what you’re used to. Some examples are: metro, hospital, idea, escape, lava, visa, sociable, inevitable, funeral, original, cereal, horrible, and motor.
What do Spanish and Portuguese have in common?
Portuguese and Spanish are both Ibero-Romance languages which share the common “Vulgar Latin” ancestor along with French, Catalan, and Italian. Portuguese and Spanish share an 89\% lexical similarity, meaning that there are equivalent forms of words in both languages.
What is a false cognate in Spanish definition?
Not to be confused with false friends, false cognates are words that sound and look similar but do not come from a common root. This is obviously the case of the Spanish word embarazada which may look like the English “embarrassed” but actually translates to “pregnant”.
Is library a false cognate?
Cognates are words with a common origin or etymology. True cognates, like “library” and “librería” in Spanish or “livraria” in Portguese, with a common Latin root — liber — may come to have new and different meanings with usage and the passage of time.