Lesson Two: Similar Words - words ending 'al'

Learn hundreds of Spanish words instantly simply by understanding a few simple rules!

So the good news when you start learning Spanish is that there are some 3,000 words that are the same or very similar because English contains a lot of latin and Spanish is, in essence, modern day Latin.

Let's take a look at the first example: English words ending 'al' tend to come from Latin so they are often the same in Spanish. For example:

Spanish	English
Normal	Normal
Metal	Metal

So the spelling is the same but you'll have heard the way the word is pronounced in Spanish is different. This happens in two ways:

1. The stress goes on the last syllable, on the 'al'
2. The letters are said differently
   • "O" as in "or"
   • "A" as in "apple"

The way you pronounce letters is always the same in Spanish so in a short while you will be able to say a word correctly even if you have never seen it before and do not know what it means!

The complete list of pronounciations for vowels in Spanish is:

• "O" as in "or"
• "A" as in "apple"
• "I" as in "ink"
• "U" as in "lumen"
• "E" as in "extra"

Now with just one more word we can make sentences:

Spanish	English
Es	Is

Yes, it sounds just like the letter 'S' and it can mean:

• It is
• He is
• She is
• You are - when talking to someone formally (someone you don't know or someone senior to you)

SOMETHING ABOUT FORMAL EXISTS IN ENGLISH HERE

So now we can create sentences

Spanish	English
Es normal	He is normal
Es normal	She is normal
Es normal	It is normal

... and following the same rules ...

Spanish	English
Legal	Legal
Es legal	It is normal
Ilegal	Illegal
Es ilegal	It is illegal

One small point you'll notice here is that there is only one 'l' in the Spanish version of Illegal. Spanish is definitely simpler than English because using double letters is rare and when it does happen there is a definite difference in pronounciation ... but more on that later.

Now whether the 'es' refers to he/she/it or you will depend on the context. So if someone was asking "What is David like?" you might say:

Spanish	English
Es liberal	He is liberal

As I mentioned all letters in Spanish are always pronounced the same way (well there is a small exception around 'c' but we'll come to that!) so once you hear a word once like 'Natural' you will always know how, for example, 't' is pronounced.

Spanish	English
Natural	Natural
Es natural	It's natural

In Spanish the word for No is 'No' and it also means 'Not' so ....

Spanish	English
No es normal	It's not normal
No es ideal	It's not ideal

OK so to end this off here are a bunch of words which, because you now know the rule for words ending 'al', you already know in Spanish!

Spanish	English
Fatal	Fatal
Natal	Natal
Colonial	Colonial
Cultural	Cultural
Anual	Annual
Dental	Dental
Personal	Personal
Total	Total
Verbal	Verbal

If you want to play around with this just Google "English words ending in al" and you'll find websites (mainly dedicated to Scrabble fans) that list them. There are hundreds and even if you are a native English speaker you won't know a fair few of them. But try running them through Google translate to see if they are the same in Spanish.

Lesson Three: Similar Words - words ending 'ant', 'ent', 'ably', 'ibly'