Cognates: Word Cousins Across Languages

Use words that share an ancestor across languages to understand vocabulary and connect languages you know.

Cognates are words in different languages that descend from a common ancestor. English, German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Persian, and many others belong to the Indo-European family, so they share many old cognates. Compare English night, German Nacht, Spanish noche, French nuit, and Latin nox (stem noct-). They look different now, but regular sound changes connect them. That Latin stem also explains English 'nocturnal.

' Cognates between English and Spanish are especially common in academic words because both drew on Latin: information/información, biology/biología, possible/posible, nation/nación. Worked example: a bilingual reader who meets 'lunar' can connect it to Spanish luna, 'moon,' and correctly read 'a lunar eclipse. ' If you speak another language, treat it as a vocabulary bank. Ask whether an unfamiliar English word resembles a word you already know.

• 1Cognates share an ancestor across languages.
• 2Regular sound changes explain why cognates look different.
• 3Latin-based academic words often have Spanish and French cognates.