If you like languages, you have probably heard the term “cognate,” Two words from two languages are cognates when they have the same meaning and origin. The English word “audition” and the Spanish audición are cognates. They mean the same and have the same root. As the vast mayority of these words are recognizable they can be called “friends.”

There are hundreds of cognates between Spanish and English. Around 61% of the English words are similar to Spanish words.

The meaning that carries two cognates needs to be the same; their spelling, just need to resemble each other. How similar can they be? In terms of spelling, they can be identical, for example, “gas” and “placenta” or they can be just similar, like “cancel”- cancelar or “analysis,” análisis. These words are friends because one resembles the other and both have the same meaning.

We should clarify that, strictly speaking, there are no words identical, pronunciation wise, in Spanish and English. All words need to have at least one vowel sound, and vowels sounds are all different in both languages. A simple example to show this is the word “gas,” whose “a” sounds /ae/, not /a/ like in Spanish.

Regarding the level of similarity, we can categorize them into the following sets:

• Words with same spelling, pronunciation (*), and intonation, e.g., Africa- África (from 1 to 17 in the list below)
• Words with same spelling and pronunciation but different intonation: abdomen – abdomen (from 18 to 23 in the list below)
• Words with same spelling but different pronunciation: agenda- agenda /aHenda/ (from 24 to 40 in the list below)
• Words with same pronunciation but different spelling: asphyxia- asfixia /asfixia/ (from 41 to 42 in the list below)
• Words with just similarities but different spelling and different pronunciation: fever- fiebre /fiebre/ (43 in the list below). This case is the most numerous by far.

#	English	Spanish
1.	Africa	África
2.	banana	banana
3.	bar	bar
4.	cafe	café
5.	cancer	cáncer
6.	colon	colon
7.	coma	coma
8.	drama	drama
9.	extra	extra
10.	gala	gala
11.	gas	gas
12.	kilo	kilo
13.	opera	ópera
14.	pasta	pasta
15.	patio	patio
16.	picnic	picnic
17.	taxi	taxi
18.	abdomen	abdomen
19.	actor	actor
20.	animal	animal
21.	civil	civil
22.	control	control
23.	dragon	dragón
24.	agenda	agenda
25.	area	área
26.	Asia	Asia
27.	base	base
28.	cable	cable
29.	club	club
30.	crisis	crisis
31.	debate	debate
32.	gel	gel
33.	hotel	hotel
34.	idea	idea
35.	pus	pus
36.	radio	radio
37.	solo	solo
38.	triple	triple
39.	violin	violín
40.	virus	virus
41.	asphyxia	asfixia
42.	asthma	asma
43	fever	fiebre

Lastly, don’t confuse cognates with indirect cognates and false cognates. Two words are indirect when they are linked to a third word, for example, mil and “thousand” have a common link “mile,” which is actually one thousand feet. They are acquaintance, so to speak, as they are friends of a friend. False cognates are words that you think you know, but they are don’t (this is why they are also called “false friends”). An example is the word preservativo as it doesn’t mean… preservative. It means condom!

Cognates are words that we want to maximize in our vocabulary. These are easy words, words that you learn nearly effortless and that will stick in your memory forever.

The more friends, the better.

Francisco Bruquetas