More Common Errors that Spanish Speakers Make in English
We're back again this week to talk about some typical errors that Spanish speakers make when using English. Remember that great old sitcom from the 90's with Joey, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Chandler, and Phoebe? Friends was a great show but do you know what is not great? False Friends in English!
Between English and Spanish there are many similar looking words that mean the same thing. We call these cognates or friends. Words like computadora and computer are easy for speakers of English or Spanish to recognize and understand. There are thousands of cognates between the two languages and that makes learning vocabulary much easier. However, there are many false cognates out there that can lead to some embarrassing situations.
For example, the word "embarrased" and the word "embarazada" look similar but have very different meanings.
The world "embarazada" does not mean "embarrassed". It means "pregnant" so you can see what a confusion these two words could cause. Here are some other false friends to look out for!
Watch this video to have a clearer idea about this complicated issue when learning English.
Let's test your skills! Here you can play a fun matching game with false cognates. Enjoy.
Well that's it for this week. See you here next week for another English Grammar blog post. Have a great weekend!
This is a really good entry. It is true that at the beginning one of the most common mistakes students do is believing that similar words mean always the same. False cognates should be addressed quickly to prevent misunderstandings.
ResponderEliminarIn addition to that, we would also recommend people to watch the sitcom FRIENDS as it is very funny and helps to expands the vocabulary because of the great amount of phrasal verbs they use.
In addition to that, we would also recommend people to watch the sitcom FRIENDS as it is very funny and helps to expands the vocabulary because of the great amount of phrasal verbs they use.
We really liked that you focused on different mistakes that most of the times spanish speakers will make because of different reasons but as you said, a common mistake is to beleive that words that seem to be simmilar in english and in spanish have the same meaning but actually they do not.
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