Extending Foreign Language Vocabulary Through Cognates

Posted by Margaret M. Williams Oct 22, 2008

It’s amazing, when you study various world languages, how many words there are in common among languages, and particularly between English and other languages. Of course, since English is an amalgam of Romance, Germanic, and other languages, perhaps the numbers of these common words are not so surprising.

These look-alike words, if they are derived from the same root, are called cognates. They tend to be easy to remember because they have the same meaning and very similar spellings. It strikes me that cognates can be a good starting place for building usable vocabulary in a new language.

I’m working on a series of articles about cognates connecting English to a variety of world languages. I’ve built lists for French/English, Spanish/English, and Italian/English cognates. Not surprisingly, many of the cognates can be found in all three languages, because they all have roots in the Romance language of Latin.

I have plans to include cognate lists for other languages as well. As I study Japanese, I am continually surprised by the number of words Japanese and English have in common. And no, it’s not just the tech words. Watch for a Japanese/English cognate list to arrive soon!