Cognates, True and False

People learning a new language often rely on their knowledge of their native language as they attempt to communicate, especially when the two languages are related and have many words that look or sound alike. This is a useful strategy, but it can backfire, as many language students know. Some cases can be humorous and provide listeners with a good laugh or at least a stifled one. A well-known example concerns a young unmarried woman who studied some Spanish to use when visiting Spain. The first night in Spain, at a formal dinner, she is asked to give a short speech. She rises and begins by explaining that she is embarazada that her Spanish is not better. Some of the guests who knew some English laughed, guessing her faux pas. Only later did a sympathetic friend explain that the Spanish word she used means pregnant, not embarrassed, as she had intended.

This story illustrates the problems false cognates can cause. False cognates, such as embarazada and embarrassed, are words from two languages that look alike but come from different roots and have completely different meanings. When language learners, like the woman in the story, try to draw on the surface similarity to fill a gap in their vocabulary, the results can indeed be embarrassing.

Even though false cognates can cause communication problems for language learners, they can be an important resource to draw on for building a wider vocabulary in the new language. Cognates are words derived from the same root or, literally, words that are born together (from the Latin co, meaning with or together, and gnatus, meaning born). English language learners must draw on all available resources, including cognates, because they face a formidable task in acquiring English vocabulary.

Michael Graves cites studies showing that native-English-speaking third graders have a reading vocabulary of about 10,000 words. The average 12th-grade student's reading vocabulary is nearly 40,000 words. This means that children acquire about 3,000 words each year. Much of this vocabulary is acquired through reading. As they read, students infer word meanings from context. Estimates of the number of words students learn from context vary. However, middle-grade students learn somewhere between 800 and 8,000 words annually simply from reading. School texts contain more words than does oral language that form part of the academic vocabulary students need to succeed academically. Students who read more acquire more of these words. It is a clear case of the rich getting richer.

Many English language learners start third grade with far fewer than 10,000 words. Because they have more limited vocabularies, they do not read nearly as much in English as do their native English-speaking classmates. Since reading is a major source of vocabulary acquisition, English learners do not acquire as many words from reading as their native English-speaking peers. As a result, rather than catching up, they may actually fall further behind each year. However, when teachers read to English learners and provide time and encouragement for bilingual students to read, vocabulary growth is accelerated. Further, teachers of English learners can help their students acquire English vocabulary as they infer word meanings by looking for cognates.

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