DON´T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER: FALSE COGNATES

When two languages have common origins, they share a lot of vocabulary. Languages come in families, so they have a common parent or root.

The Romance languages of the linguistic families among the European languages are Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian, and Catalan are the main ones. The Romance languages have a common ancestor, the language of the Romans (Latin), the Germanic languages (being German and English the main ones), the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian), the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech), Uro-Altaic (Hungarian and Finnish) and finally, almost single-handedly without descendants, Greek. Ancient Greek evolved, thus becoming Modern Greek without spreading to other languages as Latin did, although there are regional dialects.

False cognate is pair of words that look generically alike or related because of similarity. They can be within the same language or from different languages. This time we will talk about English and Spanish.

ENGLISH WORD	SAME WORD IN SPANISH	SPANISH WORD	SAME WORD IN ENGLISH
soap	jabón	sopa	soup
embarrased	avergonsado	embarazada	pregnant
disgust	repugnancia	disgusto	misfortune
fabric	tejido, tela	fábrica	factory
camp	campamento	campo	Field or countryside
carpet	alformbra	carpeta	folder
costume	disfraz, traje	costumbre	habit
library	biblioteca	librería	Bookshop
molest	agredir	molestar	annoy
record	Grabar, anotar	recordar	Remember or remind
resume	reanudar	resumir	summarize
retired	jubilado	retirar	withdrawn
vicious	salvaje	vicioso	Addict or depraved

A good translator should cultivate an extensive vocabulary in both languages and be aware of false cognates, which can be tricky.