What is a false friend?
A Spanish word that looks like an English word and means something else. Embarazada looks like embarrassed and means pregnant; éxito looks like exit and means success; constipado looks like constipated and means that you have a cold. English speakers meet more of them in Spanish than in any other language, because so much of English is Latin that arrived through French — the same roots Spanish grew from — and the two languages kept different senses of the same word.
They come in three strengths. The total false friend shares nothing but its spelling (sopa is soup, ropa is clothes). The half friend shares one meaning and hides another (discutir is to discuss and, more often, to argue). And the true cognate that learners doubt because it looks too easy (cortina really is a curtain). The charts below take them in that order, by the mistake each one causes, and the quiz at the top mixes the ones our learners trip on most.
The nouns that mean something else
Two of these are worth a second look because the mistake runs both ways. A lecture is a conferencia and a conference is a congreso, so the English speaker who announces una lectura has promised a reading. And once is eleven — the number — so quiero verlo once means you want to see it eleven times; once in the English sense is una vez.
| Spanish | Means — not… (the word you wanted) |
|---|---|
| el éxito | success — not exit (la salida) |
| el suceso | an event, an incident — not success (el éxito) |
| la sopa | soup — not soap (el jabón) |
| la ropa | clothes — not rope (la cuerda) |
| la carpeta | a folder — not carpet (la alfombra) |
| la librería | a bookshop — not library (la biblioteca) |
| la fábrica | a factory — not fabric (la tela) |
| los parientes | relatives — not parents (los padres) |
| el vaso | a drinking glass — not vase (el jarrón) |
| el nudo | a knot — not nude (desnudo) |
| el pie | a foot — not pie (el pastel, la tarta) |
| la red | a net, a network — not red (rojo) |
| el pan | bread — not pan (la sartén) |
| la grosería | a rude remark — not grocery (la tienda) |
| el delito | a crime — not delight (el placer) |
| la desgracia | a misfortune — not disgrace (la vergüenza) |
| la decepción | disappointment — not deception (el engaño) |
| el compromiso | a commitment, an engagement — not compromise (el acuerdo) |
| el idioma | a language — not idiom (el modismo) |
| el campo | the countryside — not camp (el campamento) |
| la carta | a letter, a menu — not card (la tarjeta) |
| el colegio | a school — not college (la universidad) |
| la lectura | reading — not lecture (la conferencia) |
| la conferencia | a lecture — not conference (el congreso) |
| el preservativo | a condom — not preservative (el conservante) |
| el tópico | a cliché — not topic (el tema) |
The verbs that do something else
The verbs are the ones that survive into B1, because the sentence still sounds plausible. Te asistí a la reunión is understood and wrong; asistir takes a and an event, and helping someone is ayudar. Realicé que llegaba tarde is the commonest of all — realizar is to carry something out, and noticing is darse cuenta de — and it is the one sentence a native speaker will always hear as English.
| Spanish | Means — not… (the verb you wanted) |
|---|---|
| realizar | to carry out — not to realise (darse cuenta de) |
| asistir a | to attend — not to assist (ayudar) |
| atender | to serve, to see to — not to attend (asistir a) |
| recordar | to remember — not to record (grabar) |
| remover | to stir — not to remove (quitar) |
| quitar | to take off, to remove — not to quit (dejar) |
| soportar | to bear, to put up with — not to support (apoyar) |
| pretender | to intend, to try to — not to pretend (fingir) |
| molestar | to bother, to annoy — not to molest (abusar de) |
| contestar | to answer — not to contest (disputar) |
| introducir | to insert — not to introduce a person (presentar) |
| advertir | to warn — not to advertise (anunciar) |
| suceder | to happen — not to succeed (tener éxito) |
| discutir | to argue, and also to discuss (for a chat: hablar de) |
The describing words
Bizarro is the one the dictionaries and the street disagree on: the Real Academia's entry leads with brave, gallant, and many speakers now also use it for strange, a sense borrowed back from English and French. Say raro or extraño and you are safe everywhere. Actualmente and eventualmente are the two that change a whole sentence. Actualmente vivo en Madrid is I currently live in Madrid, not actually; eventualmente nos vemos is we see each other now and then, not eventually. Both are adverbs of time in Spanish and adverbs of attitude in English, which is why the sentence around them still reads naturally and the meaning has moved.
| Spanish | Means — not… (the word you wanted) |
|---|---|
| embarazada | pregnant — not embarrassed (avergonzada) |
| constipado | having a cold — not constipated (estreñido) |
| excitado | aroused — not excited (emocionado) |
| sensible | sensitive — not sensible (sensato) |
| educado | polite, well brought up — not educated (culto) |
| simpático | nice, likeable — not sympathetic (compasivo) |
| sano | healthy — not sane (cuerdo) |
| largo | long — not large (grande) |
| actual | current, present — not actual (real, verdadero) |
| actualmente | currently — not actually (en realidad) |
| eventualmente | possibly, by chance — not eventually (finalmente) |
| último | last, latest — not ultimate (definitivo) |
| cándido | naive, innocent — not candid (franco, sincero) |
| bizarro | brave, gallant — not bizarre (raro, extraño); see below |
Half friends: one meaning shared, one not
The half friends are the ones that still fool B2 learners, because the first meaning is right. Discutimos ayer usually means we had a row, not a chat; tener audiencia with a judge is a date in court; estudié la carrera de Derecho is I did a law degree, not that law was my career. Read the middle column as the meaning you share and the last as the one to watch for.
| Spanish | Shared meaning | Other meaning |
|---|---|---|
| discutir | to discuss | to argue, to quarrel |
| el argumento | an argument (a case) | the plot of a film or novel |
| el carácter | a person's character | — a story's character is un personaje |
| asistir | to assist (a patient) | to attend an event |
| la audiencia | an audience | a court hearing |
| la aplicación | an app | — for a job you file una solicitud |
| la carrera | a career | a race; a degree |
The true cognates you can trust
This is the other half of the story, and the bigger half. Most of the Latin vocabulary English owns — thousands of words — is Spanish with a different ending, and an English speaker who reads información, posible and famoso for what they are starts with a vocabulary a Chinese or Japanese learner has to build from zero. The false friends are the price of that head start: a few dozen words out of thousands. Learn the few, trust the rest.
| English → Spanish | Examples | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| -tion → -ción | nación, información | All feminine; the stress mark is always there. |
| -ty → -dad | universidad, libertad | Feminine too — la universidad. |
| -ly → -mente | rápidamente, finalmente | Built on the feminine adjective: lenta → lentamente. |
| -ous → -oso | famoso, peligroso | Agrees with the noun: una ciudad peligrosa. |
| -ist → -ista | dentista, turista | One form for both genders: el turista, la turista. |
| -ble → -ble | posible, terrible | Sensible is the exception above — it means sensitive. |
| -ary → -ario | diccionario, ordinario | Masculine in Spanish. |
Why does Spanish have so many false friends?
Because English and Spanish took the same Latin words at different times and kept different senses of them. Embarazada and embarrassed both go back to a word for an obstacle or a hindrance; Spanish kept the physical sense and English the social one. Éxito and exit are the same Latin exitus, a way out — Spanish kept the going-out and turned it into a good outcome, English kept the door. Sensible comes from a Latin word for feeling, which English narrowed to good judgement and Spanish to feeling easily. Each pair is a fork in a road the two languages walked together for a while.
There is no first-party error rate on this page: our mistake tagger counts grammar points — ser vs estar, por vs para, the tenses, the pronouns — and false friends are vocabulary. When it does, the number will sit here, the way it does on the sibling pages. Until then the quiz is the measure, and the deck below is the drill.
How to stop them fooling you
Do not learn the list. Learn the sentence each pair lives in — estoy constipado, no soporto el calor, me di cuenta de que — because a false friend is a reading reflex, and only another reflex beats it. Inside Nivelo the False Friends & Cognates starter deck does exactly that: 67 of these pairs from A2 to B2, each with a sentence, spaced so the ones you miss come back sooner. The quiz at the top of this page is the ten-sentence version; retake it in a week and the misses will have moved.
What comes after false friends?
The saber vs conocer quiz is the next place English has one word and Spanish two, and the ser vs estar quiz is the one every beginner meets first. The free Spanish level test places you on the A1–C2 scale in five minutes — the vocabulary half of it is where false friends show. If you are wondering how long the whole road is, how long it takes to learn Spanish counts the hours, cognates included.