The Latin overlap between English and Spanish is the best gift the language gives you, and it comes with a bill. I interpret for a living, which means a false friend is something that can cost my client money in real time — so I've spent a long while sorting the ones that matter from the ones that make good blog posts.
Alonso Coronado陆子龙
·7 min read
Before the warnings: the cognates overwhelmingly work. Información, necesario, posible, universidad, importante, diferente, natural, animal, general, hospital. Thousands of them, and they're front-loaded toward the long, useful, abstract words you'd otherwise spend years acquiring.
The pattern is reliable enough to guess with. English -tion becomes Spanish -ción; -ty becomes -dad; -ous becomes -oso. You can build a serviceable vocabulary this way, and mostly be right.
Guessing is a good strategy. It's just a strategy with a known failure rate, and the failures are worth knowing individually.
Short list. Memorise these five and you've handled most of the real risk.
| Spanish | Looks like | Actually means | «That» in Spanish |
|---|---|---|---|
| embarazada | embarrassed | pregnant | avergonzado |
| constipado | constipated | having a cold | estreñido |
| preservativos | preservatives | condoms | conservantes |
| excitado | excited | aroused | emocionado |
| molestar | to molest | to bother, to annoy | abusar |
These get repeated everywhere because they're funny, and it's worth saying that the last two are the ones that actually cause trouble. Embarazada produces a laugh and a correction. Telling a colleague you're excitado about a project lands differently, and the mistake isn't obvious to the person making it.
These matter more, and almost never make the lists, because nothing about them is funny. They just make you slightly wrong, often, in ways nobody corrects.
| Spanish | You'll assume | It means |
|---|---|---|
| actualmente | actually | currently, at present |
| eventualmente | eventually | possibly, occasionally |
| realizar | to realise | to carry out, to perform |
| asistir | to assist | to attend |
| pretender | to pretend | to intend, to aim to |
| sensible | sensible | sensitive |
| éxito | exit | success |
| carpeta | carpet | folder |
This is the set I'd actually spend time on. Actualmente and eventualmente in particular will make you say the opposite of what you mean in a professional context, and — because the sentence still parses — nobody will stop you.
False friends get unlearned in context and on repetition, not from a list you read once.
Here's a subtler version of the same problem, and the one that most affects how you come across once your Spanish is decent.
English has a formal Latin word and a plain Germanic one for the same idea: commence and start, purchase and buy, utilise and use. The Latin one feels stiff. In Spanish, the Latin one is often the ordinary word.
| Spanish everyday word | Its English cognate | What English actually says |
|---|---|---|
| comprar | — | buy |
| utilizar | utilise | use |
| comenzar | commence | start |
| asistir a | assist at | attend |
| solicitar | solicit | apply for |
So an English speaker meets utilizar, files it as «formal», and reaches for something else in casual conversation — when utilizar is what a Mexican says buying batteries. The cognate is right; the instinct about how fancy it is comes from English and doesn't transfer.
Frequently asked
The famous ones are embarazada (pregnant, not embarrassed), constipado (having a cold), preservativos (condoms), excitado (aroused) and molestar (to bother). But the ones that cause more real trouble are quieter: actualmente means currently, eventualmente means possibly, realizar means to carry out, and asistir means to attend.
Yes. Embarrassed is avergonzado or apenado. It's the most repeated false friend in Spanish, and in practice the least costly — it produces a laugh and an immediate correction, unlike the ones that quietly reverse your meaning.
Overwhelmingly, yes. The patterns hold — English -tion becomes -ción, -ty becomes -dad, -ous becomes -oso — and guessing gains you thousands of words. It's a good strategy with a known and fairly small failure rate, so the answer is to keep guessing and learn the exceptions individually.
Currently, at present. It does not mean «actually» — that's en realidad or de hecho. It's one of the most costly false friends because the sentence still makes sense with the wrong reading, so nobody corrects you.
Because English kept both a Latin word and a plain Germanic one for many ideas, and the Latin one drifted formal. Spanish only has the Latin one, so it's just the ordinary word. Utilizar, comenzar and solicitar feel stiff to an English ear and are entirely everyday in Spanish.
Vocabulary in context and on spaced repetition, which is how a false friend gets unlearned — a list won't do it.
Keep reading
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