You might not realize it but you already know hundreds, if not thousands, of Spanish words? In these articles we will highlight all the ways in which the English and Spanish languages share hundreds of words, words that you will be able to use every day.
‘Ible And ‘Able Words
Any English that ends in ABLE or IBLE has a Spanish counterpart will almost always be the same.
As an example favorable, formidable, considerable, admirable and honorable all have the same in meanings in both languages.
This also applies to the IBLE words, words like combustible, comestible, horrible, terrible and impossible. What is also worth noting is that if the word can be split by the removal of the suffix (take the “ible” away from terrible and you have terror or “able” away from honorable to leave honor) then the start of word can be used in Spanish as well.
The words may be spelled the same in both languages and have the same normal ( normal is an English/Spanish word) meaning they are pronounced differently. A guide on how to pronounce Spanish words can be found in later articles.
Modern Words.
Languages evolve and develop as the years pass with the majority of new words that entering a language coming from the scientific or technological area (area is also an English/Spanish word).
Examples of shared words include; alcohol, eclipse, celestial, bacteria, aerosol, interface, laser, numeral, factor and television. New inventions will normally be called the same all over the world but as you can see the shared words come from all kinds of disciplines and the ones chosen here are only a tiny sample,
As emphasized, these will be subject to Spanish pronunciation changes.
Cultural Cossover.
With the advent of global communications the World is getting smaller, and as a result the cultural differences between countries too gets smaller. This leads to words crossing boundaries and being used in the everyday language of many languages, so words that have a heavy popular (popular is an English/Spanish word) cultural reference will quite often be usable.
Examples of this include things like; golf, director, hockey (sobre hielo, is ice hockey), album, comercial, comic, ballet, video, jersey and record.
Because this crossover works both ways, without knowing it, you will have come across many Spanish words in every day use, words in place names, words from cookery etc. Words like; adios (goodbye), bandido (bandit), cabana (hut), chorizo (sausage), empanada (pastry), cerveza (beer), Navidad (Christmas), diablo (devil), junta (committee), hacienda (home),
laguna (lagoon), macho (manly), padre (father) and tortilla (omelet).
Try one day noting how many Spanish words you come across, you may be surprised.
This is just the start of unlocking you hidden knowledge look out for part 2.