Today’s episode is “Bueno saberlo” or Good to know. But what is good to know? Surprise! My dear Spanish learner, you already know at least 500 words to use in simple sentences, words that allow you to understand the general idea of a text or a short listening exercise. Yes, I’m talking about cognates.

As a Spanish speaker, I have taken advantage of this when I learned French and recently with Italian. But even with English, there is a long list of over 500 words that look alike or almost, sound similar, and mean the same.

The following text is the one I read in this episode:

“El hotel Tramonto en la capital de Italia es precioso. Está cerca de la estación central de trenes. Tiene un bar y un restaurante espectacular. Es la mejor decisión para celebrar el aniversario.”

Let me give you a short review of the different groups of cognates.

1. Perfect cognates like hotel, canal, drama.
2. Near perfect cognates: atención/ attention; celebración/ celebration.
3. -ary becomes -ario: annversary / aniversario; salary/ salario; diary/ diario.
4. -ic becomes -ico: authentic/ auténtico; fantastic/ fantástico; panico/ pánico.
5. -ious becomes -oso: curious/ curioso; precious/ precioso.
6. -ct becomes -ecto: correct/ correcto; product/ producto.
7. -ity becomes -idad: curiosity/ curiosidad; activity/ actividad; possibility/ posibilidad
8. verbs ending in -ate change to -ar: celebrate/ celebrar; nominate/ nominar; indicate/ indicar.

This is a useful trick. However, there is a dark side to the story but that is going to be the topic for a future episode. Stay tuned and consider subscribing because you don’t want to miss any new episodes.

Hasta el jueves que viene,

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