What are cognate?
Cognates are words that have phonetic similarities and similar meanings in different languages. These words have a common origin and are the result of the evolution of languages over time.
Origin of Cognates
Cognates arise due to the influence of different languages on each other. For example, Latin had a great influence on Romance languages, such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French and Romanian. This makes these languages share many cognate words.
Examples of cognates
Some cognate words in Portuguese and Spanish are:
- Friend (Portuguese) and Friend (Spanish)
- Telephone (Portuguese) and Teléphone (Spanish)
- Hotel (Portuguese) and Hotel (Spanish)
| Friend | Friend |
| Phone | TELEFONE |
| Hotel | Hotel |
These are just a few examples, but there are many other cognate words between these languages.