Cognates and Gender
¡Buenos días! Today we will look at cognates and gender in the Spanish language. I am sure you have heard of people teasingly add the letter “o” to English words when they are pretending to speak Spanish—and maybe you have done so as well. The truth is, you are not exactly wrong for doing that, even though some words sound quite funny when that is done to them. Well, here is the explanation for that: There are many cognates, that is, words that are similar or even identical in two languages. For example, in a previous lesson, you saw that the word “simple” was exactly the same in Spanish. It was just pronounced a little different. That is a cognate. In addition to this, words that end in “ment” in English are changed to “mento” in Spanish. Words that end in “id” are changed to “ido”, words that end in “ic” are changed to “ico”, and words that end in “ous” are changed to “oso” (with the addition of an accent mark in some cases). English is a gender-neutral language, while Spanish, on the other hand, is a “gendered” language, where all its Nouns are either masculine, feminine, or irregular. Now, remember that a noun is a word that describes a person, place, or thing. So, how do you know whether a person, place, or thing is masculine or feminine in Spanish? ¡Es muy simple! All nouns that end with the letter “o” in Spanish are masculine and all nouns that end with the letter “a” are feminine. With this in mind, here is a little exercise for you to do. Place the letter “m” or the letter “f” beside each of the following words below: Again, masculine words end in “o” and feminine words end in “a.” And that’s it! Now you know why we like to attach “Os” to English words whenever we “try” to speak Spanish. Next Sunday, we will look at Irregular Nouns. See you then.