Learning Spanish vocabulary can be quite simple if you are a native English speaker because English borrows many words from Latin. By identifying these words, called cognates, you will have an instant Spanish vocabulary of thousands of words.
When learning Spanish, have you ever found out words that are spelled exactly the same in English and in Spanish, and they mean the same thing in both languages? Those similar words are called cognates.
About 90% of Spanish cognates have the same meaning in English. This is because the two languages share many of the same Latin and Greek roots. These similarities allow you to learn Spanish vocabulary words faster since writing and pronunciation of these words are familiar to English speakers.
There are two kinds of Spanish cognates: true cognates and false cognates (also called “false friends”).
True Spanish Cognates
These are words that have a common etymological origin; in other words, they share the same Latin root and are very similar in spelling and meaning.