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COGNATES AND FALSE COGNATES

RUBY CLAIRE B. LICTAOA, MAED E.M/FILIPINO

· Volume II Issue IV

So, before we proceed on the Cognates and False Cognates.  Part of this topic is the discussion on how has the Spanish language influenced Tagalog language in the Philippines. We will be mentioning about the Spanish Philippines: Its History and Influence on Filipino Language because when we are talking about cognates we are speaking on the different languages.

The influence of the Spanish Language can still clearly see their effects on the Philippines today. The name “Philippines. “is a good example. It originates from one of the Spanish kings, Philip of Asturias. In addition to this, there are thousands of Spanish words that are borrowed from said to be 170 mother tongue in Philippine languages, and Spanish hieroglyphic has changed the orthographic structure employed for writing the majority of these dialects. In the Southern province of Zamboanga, Chavacano (also known as Zamboangueno) is spoken mainly considered as Spanish-based creole language.

The era of the Spanish Philippines still affects the country is with language is one of the most obvious ways. About one-third or (4,000) of the words in Tagalog are Spanish origin, and around 6,000 words in other Filipino languages originated from Spanish. The Spanish has mostly influenced the vocabulary of the Filipino languages related to everyday living during the Spanish Occupation. Now let us see how similar some Tagalog words are to Spanish. Try reading just the Spanish words first to see if you can guess what Tagalog word they come from and some of the words are now considered obsolete or commonly substituted with English.

Everyday words such as pasaporte, miembro, escuela, estudiante, and profesor in Spanish have equivalent words in Filipino as pasaporte, miyembro, eskwela, estudyante and propesor and passport, member, school, student and professor in English.

The United States rule at long last replaced Spanish with English as the dominant primitive language and this lead them the interest to educate the vernacular English as compared to the Spanish. They also appeared to diminish the foregoing Spanish leadership even though Spanish endured a predominant language throughout the rule of US.

The rise of Tagalog as the national language. In 1937, Tagalog was chosen as the basis for the latest “national language” by Manuel Quezon and such and English restoring Spanish as the presiding primitive language granted to the deposition of the Spanish language in the Philippines. This national language was later renamed to Pilipino then Filipino but it looks most people equitable named it Tagalog.

We already knew the influences of Spanish on our language and its some its words similarities. Now let us try to come accross the similarities between Spanish and English language. Did you know that about 90% of Spanish cognates have the same meaning in English? When you encountered words that are the same in both languages they are referred to as English-Spanish cognates. The appropriate meaning of cognate is inhibited for phrase that exist in two different languages and owned replaceable origin or formation. The significant idea regarding learning Spanish imminent from English is that there are tons of words-better known as Spanish Cognates.

Cognates are phrases in two different languages that have usual progress and thus are similar, or identical in their meanings. For example, without knowing any Spanish you might perhaps predict that the term accidente have equivalent meaning of accident in English.

Moreover, in linguistics, cognates are known as words from different languages that have the same root or origin and share the same meaning. If you are an English speaker interested to acquire knowledge of Spanish, cognates allow you a vast superiority when transpire to your Spanish vocabulary. 

Based on the study of Colorin Colorado (2007) Cognates are words in two languages that take part in the same meaning, spelling, and pronunciation. Thirty-forty percent of all words in English have a associated word in Spanish. For Spanish-speaking English Language Learners, cognates are explicit evident tool to the English language. 

Unexpectedly, scholars studying the fundamental and secondary accession have found that students benefit from Cognate awareness. Cognate awareness is the capability to utilize cognates as a basic language being an instrument for comprehending a secondary language. Children can be taught to make use of cognates even as on its early stages. As students promoted to the next grade levels, it is said to be that they can be presented to likely more advanced cognates, and to cognates that have numerous meanings in same languages, even though few of these meanings may not overlap. 

We are already knowledgeable about the Cognates, now let us talk about what false cognates are. There are also false cognates. These are words that look like words in English, but have no common meaning. For example, the Spanish word carpeta do not pertain carpet in English, rather it means folder. 

Some Spanish words look like English words are called false cognates. Examples of these are globe (map), rope (cord), embarrassed (shame), and exit (leaving) and globo (balloon), ropa (clothes), embarazada (pregnant), and exito (success).

On the other hand, some Spanish words look exactly the same as they do in English, but you must pronounce them differently because you are speaking Spanish (obviously). For example, the word actor is the same in English and in Spanish, however should be enunciate dissimilarly since phonetics produce distinct sounds in Spanish in relative to English.

English word that ends in “ist”, generally add “ista” to the end of it as a Spanish rule. Such as tourist-turista, socialist-socialista, egoist-egoista, 

If an English word ends in “ty” generally change it to “dad” such as words as electricity-electricidad, university-universidad and identity-identidad.

Furthermore, if an English word ends in “tion” generally change it to "cion” such as words as action- acción, instruction- instrucción, and condition- condición.

If an Englsih word ends in “al” some of the times the Spanish word is identical, such as words as criminal-criminal, natural-natural and usual-usual.

For adverbs, which end in “ly” you change it to “mente”, such as words as difficulty- difícilmente, exactly- exactamente and naturally- naturalmente.

The benefits of cognates in teachers and students are: teachers using cognates to develop reading comprehension as classroom strategies, to promote academically bilingual and multiliterate teacher and students and awareness on opportunity to focus on explicit instruction on the similarities and differences of Spanish and English.

As bilingual and multi-lingual educators, our goal is for students to be aware of their own language practices as well as those of their peers as they are engaged in learning activities.