English Spanish Cognates

Part 2

Cognates are two words that have a common origin. Most often, cognates are words in two languages. Many Spanish and English words have Latin or Greek roots and the same meaning. Because Spanish and English words often share the same Latin root, many words have similar spelling and the same meaning. This knowledge can be easily transferred in the acquisition of the second language. For example, gratitude and gratitud both coming from the Latin word gratitudo, meaning “thankfulness”.

English Spanish Cognate Rule 7

English words ending in –ary change to –ario in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
temporary	temporario
vocabulary	vocabulario
salary	salario
diary	diario

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 8

English words ending in –ant change to –ante in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
vacant	vacante
important	importante
elegant	elegante
instant	instante

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 9

English words ending in –ble are usually the same in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
visible	visible
impossible	imposible
horrible	horrible
terrible	terrible

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 10

English words ending in –ence change to –encia in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
violence	violencia
excellence	excelencia
frequence	frecuencia
intelligence	inteligencia

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 11

English words ending in –id change to –ido in Spanish. Many words following this rule have an accent on the first vowel.

Examples:

English	Spanish
liquid	líquido
rapid	rápido
solid	sólido
vivid	vívido

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 12

English words ending in –ment change to –mento in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
department	departmento
argument	argumento
cement	cemento
moment	momento

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to learn more about our workbook series English Vocabulary for the Spanish Speaker which provides practice using English Spanish cognates. At our website, check out all of our easy to use workbooks for Spanish-speaking teens and adults.

English Spanish Cognates

 

There are many English Spanish Cognates. When learning a new language, cognates can be easy words to remember because they look and mean the same thing as words you already know. For example, gratitude in English means the same as gratitud in Spanish. Cognates are words that have a shared origin — like gratitude and gratitud both come from the Latin word gratitudo, meaning “thankfulness”.

English Spanish Cognate Rule 1

English words that end in -ous change to –oso in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
delicious	delicioso
curious	curioso
religious	religioso
precious	precioso

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 2

English words that end in –al are usually the same in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
hospital	hospital
medical	medical
animal	animal
final	final

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 3

English words that end in -ct change to –cto in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
perfect	perfecto
insect	insecto
correct	correcto
conflict	conflicto

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 4

English words that end in -ic change to –ico in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
basic	básico
fantastic	fantástic
generic	genéric
organic	orgánico

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 5

English words that end in -ar usually are the same in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
popular	popular
regular	regular
similar	similar
familiar	familiar

 

English Spanish Cognate Rule 6

English words that end in -ance change to –ancia in Spanish.

Examples:

English	Spanish
distance	distancia
importance	importancia
abundance	abundancia
ambulance	ambulancia

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to learn more about our workbook series English Vocabulary for the Spanish Speaker which provides practice using English Spanish cognates. Check out all of our easy to use workbooks for Spanish-speaking teens and adults at our website.

 

 

Mother’s Day

 

Do you know a Spanish-speaking mother who would like to learn English this Mothers Day? Our workbooks are great for busy mothers. Our workbooks are easy to use: the pace is reasonable, the print is large, directions are in Spanish, there are lots of pictures but the content is for adults. Plus there is an Answer Key at the end of each lesson. Our workbooks would be a great gift for a mother who would like to learn or improve her English!

 Mother’s Day is celebrated around the world; traditions vary depending on the country. In Thailand, Mother’s Day is celebrated in August on the birthday of the current queen. In Ethiopia, families gather each fall to sing songs and eat a large feast as part of a multi-day celebration honoring motherhood. In the United States, Mother’s Day is celebrated by presenting mothers and other women with gifts and flowers, and has become one of the biggest holidays for consumer spending. Families also celebrate by giving mothers a day off from activities like cooking or other household chores.

 In the United States, Anna Jarvis conceived of the idea for Mother’s Day after the death of her mother in 1905. She wanted to honor the sacrifices mothers made for their children. In 1908, after gaining financial backing from a Philadelphia department store owner, she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia.

 Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvis who was unmarried and childless resolved to see her holiday added to the national calendar. Arguing that American holidays were biased toward male achievements, she started a massive letter writing campaign to newspapers and prominent politicians urging the adoption of a special day honoring motherhood. By 1912, many states, towns and churches had adopted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday and Jarvis had established the Mother’s Day International Association to help promote her cause. In 1914, her persistence paid off when President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

 Anna Jarvis originally conceived of Mother’s Day as a day of personal celebration between mothers and families. Her vision of the day involved wearing a white carnation as a badge and visiting one’s mother or attending church services. But once Mother’s Day became a national holiday, it was not long before florists, card companies and other merchants capitalized on its popularity.

 Jarvis initially worked with the floral industry to help raise awareness of Mother’s Day’s, but by 1920 she became disgusted with how the holiday had become so commercialized. She outwardly denounced the transformation and urged people to stop buying Mother’s Day flowers, cards and candies. Jarvis eventually resorted to an open campaign against Mother’s Day profiteers, speaking out against confectioners, florists and even charities. She launched countless lawsuits against groups that had used the name “Mother’s Day,” eventually spending most of her personal wealth in legal fees. By the time of her death in 1948, Jarvis had disowned the holiday altogether, and actively lobbied the government to have it removed from the American calendar.

 Mother’s Day has also been a date for launching political or feminist causes. In 1968, Coretta Scott King, wife of Dr. Martin Luther King, used Mother’s Day to host a march in support of underprivileged women and children. In the 1970s, women’s groups also used the holiday as a time to highlight the need for equal rights and access to childcare.

 

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to find out more about our easy to use workbooks for Spanish-speaking teens and adults who want to learn English.

Busy Parents

 

Fisher Hill workbooks are great for busy parents that are Spanish-speaking who want to learn English. The pace is reasonable, print is large, directions are in Spanish, there are lots of pictures but the content is for adults. Plus there is an Answer Key at the end of each lesson.

Parenting is a difficult job. Some children are more demanding than others. My younger son was constantly surprising me with his behavior. Taking out the trash was one of his jobs. Once when he was around five, I asked him to take out an empty soap box. “Peter, hold the box right side up so no left over soap falls out.” So, what’s the first thing he does when he steps out the door to the patio? He pours out the remaining soap. (I was secretly watching him from a window.) Sometimes the trash did not even get to the trashcans. Once our neighbor called and said there were empty milk cartons in her backyard. Peter had tossed them over the wall. When I asked him Why?, he said he was afraid to go out to the trashcans.

School was hard for both boys because they had difficulty with reading. For years, I had to sit down with them and help them with their homework. “OK, Steven, you read a paragraph then I’ll read a paragraph.”

 Raising kids takes a lot of time and energy. My advice is: pace yourself because it’s a long haul.

 I have written all the workbooks in the literacy series with my two boys in mind and all the other students I’ve worked with who have found learning to read to be difficult.  

 

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to find out more about our easy to use workbooks for Spanish-speaking teens and adults who want to learn English.

Getting Organized

 

Do you know someone who is extremely disorganized? My twenty-six year son who is now a software developer was very disorganized when he was younger. Perhaps, it was because he was doing something he was not interested in – school. Starting in fifth grade, he did not bring home his homework, nor write his assignments into his school organizer. The night before a big project was due he would say, “Tomorrow such and such is due.” We would have to go to the store, buy the materials and do the project. I say “we” because I was more stressed out about his homework than he was. Fifteen years later, he is now organized. Why now and not at ten? Maturity? Or is it because he is doing something he very much enjoys?

When my two boys were young, I read books about child rearing. When they were in high school, I gave all the books to the library and told the librarian the books did not work.

 Here are suggestions for getting organized (maybe they will work for you or your family):

1. Break the task into chunks. (That’s hard to do when the project is due the next day.)
2. Make a checklist and to-do list.
3. Teach calendar and time management skills. Write down improtant tasks in a digtal or paper calendar and estimate how much time each task will take.
4. Establish daily routines. (We did that. Breakfast, school, dinner as a family, homework, storytime and then bedtime.)
5. Introduce idea organizers. (Schools are now doing more of this: not just outlines but web organizers and maps.)
6. Use color-coding: Assign colors to each school subject. Use different colored pens when writing and editing.
7. Create fun memory aids. Create silly sentences, songs, acronyms or pictures to remember information.
8. Create an organized workspace. (In our family, each boy had his own desk.)
9. Check backpacks. (Every weekend, I vacuumed out my younger son’s backpack.)
10. Help your child think ahead. At bedtime review plans for the next day.

All of these suggestions take help from parents. I gave my boys a lot of help! The help has paid off or something happened because both boys who had difficulty with reading and therefore had difficulty in school are now doing very well. The oldest one (27 year old) is getting his PhD. in Chemistry. (It took him seven years to get his bachelor’s degree.) The youngest one (25 years old), dropped out of high school, passed the high school proficiency test, has yet to finish college but has a good job working as a software developer for Bookings.com.

 I hope some of these organizational skills will help you and your family.

 

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to find out more about our easy to use workbooks for Spanish-speaking teens and adults who want to learn English.

The Goal of Reading

 

 The goal of reading is to understand what you read. This is called reading comprehension. Reading fluency and having a good understanding of vocabulary helps with reading comprehension.

 Our workbook series: English Reading Comprehension for the Spanish Speaker helps Spanish-speaking teens and adults develop the necessary skills for reading narrative and informational texts. This six book series provides the necessary practice students need to develop these essential skills.

 

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to obtain more information about our English Reading Comprehension for the Spanish Speaker series and other literacy workbooks.

Workbooks to Learn English for Spanish-Speaking Teens

and Adults

 

Yesterday when I was hiking, I met a woman whose mother wants to learn English. Her mother is forty-five years old, has lived in California for over twenty years but still knows very little English.

Do you know someone who wants to learn English? Our workbooks are perfect for Spanish-speaking Teens and adults who want to learn English. The directions are in Spanish but the activities are in English. The print is large, there are lots of pictures but the lessons are geared toward adults. There is an answer key at the end of each lesson or at the back of the book. There is also an English translation of the Spanish directions at the back of each workbook. Our book English for the Spanish Speaker is a great book to get started with.

 Our books have been popular with adult education classes.  Adults like the pace of the books because the pace is not too fast.

 

 Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to find out more about our workbooks for Spanish-speaking teens and adults who want to learn English.

The Gift of Time

 

Many students need a longer time learning to read. This doesn’t mean they have limited intelligence. It means they are gifted in other areas. Hopefully, schools can help them enjoy and develop these other talents. Students who have difficulty learning to read need a structured literacy approach to reading instruction. Helping students develop their natural talents and providing a structured literacy approach to reading will help students develop a high self-esteem which is necessary for doing well in life.

Our English literacy program helps Spanish-speaking teens and adults learn to read and write in English. It provides a structured literacy approach to reading and writing. The pace is reasonable, print is large, directions are in Spanish, there are lots of pictures but the content is for adults. Teachers like our workbooks becaue everything is ready to go. There is an answer key at the end of each lesson and an English translation of the Spanish directions at the end of each book.

                  

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to obtain more information about our English literacy program for Spanish-speaking teens and adults.

Spelling Rules

 

Did you know there are 44 English speech sounds? These sounds are used for reading and spelling. Eighty percent of the words in English follow these speech sound spellings. The word cat is made up of three speech sounds. The word eight is made up of two speech sounds. If you know how to spell these 44 speech sounds, it will greatly help your spelling and reading.

The 44 speech sounds are presented in our series English Reading and Spelling for the Spanish Speaker. Practice with these speech sounds are provided in this six workbook series. Different spelling rules are also taught in the series. Did you know these following spelling rules?

The FSZL rule. The letters f, s, z, and l are doubled after a short vowel sound, for example: pass, puff, jazz and bell. Each of those four words has three speech sounds.

The ck rule. The /k/ sound is spelled with ck when the /k/ sound follows a short vowel sound, for example, back, pick, deck, puck, pocket.

The v rule. No words in English end with a v so a silent e is added to the end of the word, for example: love, give, have. Each of these three words has three speech sounds.

E is the most used letter in English. When e is added to a three phoneme word the first vowel becomes a long vowel, for example: cap becomes cape; bit becomes bite, hop becomes hope. The words cap and cape each have three speech sounds.

 The words horse, cheese, and house have a silent e at the end so they do not look like plurals.

 Every syllable has a vowel sound. The word horse is one syllable but the word horses is two syllables.

 The above are some of the spelling rules that are presented in our series English Reading and Spelling for the Spanish Speaker.

Visit our website at www.Fisher-Hill.com to get more information about this series and other series in our English literacy program for Spanish-speaking teens and adults.