Thursday, January 31, 2019

The Importance of Cognates- La Importancia de Cognados

When learning a foreign language, you will often come across words that are similar in spelling and meaning as your native language. These are what are known as cognates. In the languages related to English, there are thousands of these words. Among these languages, Spanish is one of them. If you recognize the suffix patterns, you will instantly know thousands of new words, as there are very few exceptions within these rules. For example:

Words ending with "tion" in English end with "cion" in Spanish
Those ending with "ly" end with "mente"
Those ending with "ty" end with "dad" or "ez"
Those ending with "ic" or "ical" end with "ico"
Those ending with "ct" end with "cto"
Those ending with "ive" end with "ivo"
Those ending with "id" end with "ido"
Those ending with "ous" end with "oso"
Those ending with "ment" end with "mento"
Those ending with "nt" end with "nte"
Those ending with "ce" or "cy" end with "cia"
Those ending with "ry" end with "rio" or "ria"
Those ending with "y" end with "ia"
Those ending with "us" or "um" end with "o"
Those ending with "sm" end with "smo"
Those ending with "st" end with "sta"
Those ending with "ure" end with "ura"
Those ending with "ude" end with "ud"
Those ending with "ile" end with "il"
Those ending with "age" end with "aje"
Those ending with "er" end with "ro"
Those ending with "le" end with "lo"
Those ending with "n" or "ne" end with "no" or "na"
Those ending with "m" end with "ma"

Among many others. To make it even more simple, nearly every word in the fields of politics, geography, sports, medicine, science, mathematics, music, the arts, and technology is cognate with a word in Spanish. These words are also cognate with words in the languages most related to Spanish, such as French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Memorizing these words in a foreign language will get you a head start in any language related to the target language. In general, when learning a foreign language, doesn't it make more sense to start off with what you already subconsciously know?

No comments:

Post a Comment