Do you know more Spanish words than you realise?
I have been thinking of ways to help my students in my Spanish lessons at The Modern Language School learn more vocabulary. By learning these cognates (words from two different languages that are the same or similar) you will be able to instantly learn thousands of words in Spanish very easily! Over the next few weeks, I will show you some different groups of cogates to help you learn more and more new Spanish words.
Spanish Cognate Group 1
Words that end in –ous in English change to –oso in Spanish.
Spanish words that end in -oso tend to be adjectives. In English we can often change a noun into its corresponding adjective by adding -ous e.g advantage/advantageous, harmony/harmonious, space/spacious. You can often also do this in Spanish with -oso e.g peligro (danger)/peligroso (dangerous), lujo (luxury)/lujoso (luxurious).
Examples
| English | Spanish |
| curious | curioso |
| delicious | delicioso |
| glorious | glorioso |
| mysterious | misterioso |
| numerous | numeroso |
| precious | precioso |
| religious | religioso |
| tedious | tedioso |
Group 2 will follow shortly!
