What is A Cognate?

When learning a new language, we come across a special category of words called cognates. Two questions come to our minds: what are they and how important is it for us to know them?

In linguistics the word cognate means "descended or borrowed from the same earlier form". Examples of cognate languages are French, Spanish and Italian that descended from Latin, or Scandinavian languages such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish that descended from an earlier form of a North Germanic dialect. The English language (as part of the Germanic family) shares words with other Germanic languages. Also, one third of the language is based on Latin; therefore, English shares words with Spanish and French. Here are some examples: similar, radio, television, patio, singular, plural, popular (true cognate words with Spanish);  revenue, reservoir, avenue, boulevard, abstention, parent, partial (cognate words with French). 

Cognate words help us learn new vocabulary, but we have to be careful in making the distinction between true and false cognates. True cognates are words with identical spelling and similar meanings, while false cognates are words with similar spelling but different meanings. For example the French word inhabité is translated in English as "uninhabited", while the English word inhabited is translated in French as "habité". In Spanish, the word atender means "to assist" and asistir means "to attend".

Cognates are very useful, whether they are true or false. The truth is that you can learn the new language faster and boost your vocabulary just by learning the similarities and differences of words of your own language and your target language.

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