What is Cognates?
Cognates are words in different languages that share an origin and remain recognisably similar — like English 'night', German 'Nacht' and Swedish 'natt'. They are free vocabulary: words you effectively already know before you start.
English is unusually rich in cognates because it's a Germanic language that absorbed enormous French and Latin vocabulary. That gives English speakers a head start in both directions: Germanic cognates in German, Dutch and Scandinavian; Romance cognates in Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Cognate patterns compound: once you notice that English '-tion' maps to Spanish '-ción' and French '-tion', you instantly own hundreds of words — nation/nación, information/información, celebration/celebración.
What it means for your speaking
Cognates only pay out if you can pronounce them the target language's way — say 'information' the English way in Madrid and you'll get blank looks; say 'información' with Spanish vowels and you're communicating on day one. Reading cognates is knowledge; saying them is a skill.
Practise out loud — 30 seconds a day →