Chapter 10: Find Friendly Words in English Which You Already Know
"Everyone smiles in the same language." – Unknown
It’s wonderful to realize that whatever stage of English you are at, you already know many, many
words!
These words are called ‘cognates’ or friends – they are words your language shares with English.
And there are usually huge numbers of them, whatever your native language is. Identify them early on
as you learn English, and you will be able to speak them with confidence.
For example, any word in English ending in ‘tion’ like information, election, tradition, etc. will often
be the same in other latin-based languages or even slavic languages but with a slight variation on
‘tion’. In Polish information is informacja. You just replace every word with ‘cja’ for ‘tion’ – and
instantly you have about 200 common words! In Italian these words end in ‘zione’ or in French they
are ‘cion’.
There are many identical words in English and other languages. As English spread throughout the
world as the number one language for entertainment, business, the internet, and other areas of life.
Many new words introduced into English over the last 50 years have simply been adopted into other
languages. You probably use dozens of English words every day, without even realizing it.
I can’t list all the cognates for all the languages here, but they are very easy to find. To discover
which words English shares with your language, go and search on Google and Youtube. There are
videos for every language up there. And enjoy the realization that you already know dozens, maybe
hundreds, of English words.
You can use these words right away in sentences with the most common verbs and sentence-structures
you’re using. The very best words to start with in English are words which are both in the 1,000 most
common words and which are cognates. If you create a small list of these words, then you can
instantly use them to make very sophisticated sentences in English. This is fantastic for your
confidence.
To work these words out you can find lists of cognates in English and your language online. Then find
a list of the 1,000 most common words in spoken English. Then start to explore them, to find cross-
overs. You could use the ‘search’ function on your computer to identify a few words hat are in both
lists.
Now, for all the other words which you have to remember. The easiest way to aid your memory is to
enjoy the process of learning English, as we spoke about before. But there are also some very
effective tricks to help you memorize new words ten times faster, and recall them more easily later
on. The techniques in the next chapter were developed by some of the world’s greatest memory
champions. And they are easy for anyone to start using today.
Key Tips
42. Find the English cognates in your language (the words your language shares with
English) and start using them first
43. Find the cognates which are also most commonly spoken in English
44. Put them into sentences straight away, recognize and celebrate how much English you
can already express
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