English vs. Spanish

There's not much we can say about the difference between nouns in English and nouns in Spanish—nothing that will help you right now, at least. Our advice? Practice. Then, practice some more. Reading about how English uses certain nouns in a certain context isn't the most efficient way to learn a language.

Trust us. That's not how language learning works.

Still, when learning vocabulary in another language, pay attention to these concepts:

• Connotation. This is the "feeling" of a word. Think about the word "love." In Spanish, "te amo" is reserved for the telenovelas, no? But in English, it's used casually all the time. It's not as heavy. So, pay attention to which nouns are used in what contexts. Don't just translate in your head.


• Denotation. This is the dictionary definition of a word. Some ideas are covered with only one noun in Spanish (paleta). That same idea might take a few different nouns in English (lollipop, popsicle, etc). You might not master all this the first time, so listen well and practice.


• False cognates. Cognates are words from different languages that sound similar because they have a similar etymology. Lucky for you, Spanish and English have a similar language history and therefore have many, many cognates...but there are also a lot of false cognates. Just because an English word sounds similar to a Spanish one does not mean it's the right translation for it.