Shared Language Roots

Teachers can use these shared words, called cognates, to help bilingual students master difficult school vocabulary quickly.

Shared Linguistic History

English and Spanish share thousands of words because of their historical connection to the Latin language. Even though English is a Germanic language, it adopted massive amounts of Latin words over time.

Roman soldiers and Christian missionaries introduced Latin words to Britain during the Old English period. These early words were mostly related to religion and daily life.

Writers during the Renaissance period wanted to translate classical texts into English but lacked sophisticated words. They solved this problem by directly adopting Greek and Latin words for scholarly and scientific ideas.

English evolved through three distinct major periods called Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Each period added a new layer of Latin-based words to the language.

The shared Latin roots created thousands of modern words that look similar and mean the same thing in both languages. These modern word pairs are called cognates.

English adopted Latin words for high-level academic and scientific writing. In contrast, Spanish inherited these same words as part of its everyday spoken language.

Research shows that 77 percent of shared academic words are much more common in Spanish than they are in English. This means Spanish speakers already know the meanings of words that English speakers find difficult.

A student encounters a complex academic word in an English textbook. For example, they see the advanced English word "edifice".

The student connects the hard English word to a common Spanish word they use every day. In this case, they recognize it looks like the basic Spanish word "edificio," which means building.

The student instantly transfers the simple meaning from Spanish to understand the complex English word. This process unlocks the textbook without needing a dictionary.

Categorizing words helps teachers identify exactly which vocabulary words require explicit classroom instruction. It prevents teachers from wasting time on basic words that students already pick up naturally.

Academic texts across all school subjects are packed with high-level words that share a common Latin origin. In fact, 70 percent of words on the official Academic Word List are Spanish-English cognates.