Spanish words you already know

Here is the secret that makes Spanish one of the fastest languages for English speakers to learn: you already know hundreds of words. English and Spanish share thousands of cognates — words that look and mean almost the same in both languages — because both borrowed heavily from Latin. Once you can spot them, you can read and understand a surprising amount of Spanish before you've studied a single grammar rule.

Better still, Spanish spelling is almost perfectly phonetic. Five clean vowel sounds and consistent stress mean that, unlike English, what you read is very close to what you say. Below are the patterns and the word lists that unlock all of it.

Five patterns that unlock thousands of words

Most cognates aren't random — they follow predictable rules. Learn these five and you can often guess the Spanish word correctly from the English one.

1. English -tion → Spanish -ción

This is the big one. Almost any English word ending in -tion has a Spanish twin ending in -ción (and it's always feminine: la).

2. English -ty → Spanish -dad

Abstract nouns ending in -ty usually become -dad.

3. English -ous → Spanish -oso

Adjectives ending in -ous map onto -oso (or -osa for feminine).

4. English -ment → Spanish -mento

Many concrete nouns ending in -ment add an -o.

5. English -ic → Spanish -ico

Adjectives ending in -ic or -ical become -ico.

Words that are already almost identical

Plenty of everyday Spanish words need no pattern at all — they're spelled the same or nearly the same as English. Here are some you'll use constantly, grouped by where you'll meet them.

Travel and getting around

Food and drink

Everyday life

Watch out: a few false friends

A handful of Spanish words look English but mean something else entirely. They're worth learning early so they don't catch you out: embarazada means pregnant (not embarrassed), éxito means success (not exit), ropa means clothes (not rope), and librería is a bookshop (not a library — that's biblioteca). We cover more of these on the Learn Spanish page.

From recognising words to speaking them

Recognising hundreds of words on sight is a huge head start — but reading a word and confidently saying it in conversation are different skills. That gap is exactly what Navoq is built to close. Instead of endless flashcards, you start from the words you already know, then practise them out loud in short, real sentences with instant pronunciation feedback, so you go from "I understand this" to "I can say this" fast.

The cognates above are your first few hundred words for free. The next step is making them yours.