Ah yes, those irritating and often embarrassing “exceptions” to the rules, the bane of using cognates (words that have the same or similar meaning in Spanish and English with only minor changes to the word), False Cognates and Simi-False Cognates.
From my Caribbean Spanish section you probably remember that a cognate is a word that you know in English that when said in a Spanish way means the same or a similar thing. A good example; with many words that in English end in “tion”, simply remove the “tion”, replace it with “cion” and add a Spanish accent. For example after reading this you might be in the mood for a celebration, when telling your Spanish friends about the fiesta (party) you only have to remove the “tion” from Celebration and add “cion” to come up with celebración. Party time! you just learned over 100 new Spanish words (check them out on my tion Cognates page).
But as I mentioned in the start of this tutorial this extremely useful shortcut has a problem. False Cognates and Simi-False Cognates! So, what are the difference between the two? (more…)