False friends in Spanish: The words that trick English speakers

English and Spanish share thousands of words, most of them from Latin, and most of them mean what you would expect: importante, posible, universidad. That shared vocabulary is a large part of why Spanish is one of the easiest languages for an English speaker to learn. It also lays a few traps. A handful of words look like old acquaintances and mean something else entirely, so the learner who says embarazada for embarrassed has just announced a pregnancy.

These are false friends, falsos amigos: words that look or sound like English words but have gone their own way in meaning. As a Spanish tutor in London I hear them every week, from beginners and from confident intermediate speakers alike, and I have yet to meet a learner who repeated one after being corrected. This guide collects the ones that matter most: the classic five, the ones that cause trouble at work, the words that change meaning between Spain and Latin America, and a few phrases that are not false friends but do just as much damage.

Why Spanish has false friends

Latin gave both languages a common stock of words, and French, after 1066, gave English a second helping of the same roots. Over the centuries the meanings drifted. Sensible kept the sense of feeling in Spanish and moved to reasonable in English; actual means of the present moment in Spanish and real in English. Neither language is wrong; they simply parted company, which is why the traps are the same for every English speaker and why a list of them is worth learning once.

The classic five

Five words catch almost every learner. Learn each one together with the word you actually wanted.

• Actual means current, and actualmente means currently: la situación actual is the current situation. For “actually”, say en realidad or de hecho.
• Embarazada means pregnant. Embarrassed is avergonzado or avergonzada, or simply me da vergüenza.
• Sensible means sensitive: es muy sensible, he or she is very sensitive. A sensible person is sensato or prudente.
• Asistir means to attend: voy a asistir a la reunión, I am going to attend the meeting. To help someone is ayudar.
• Constipado means having a cold: estoy constipado is nothing more alarming than “I have a cold”. The other condition is estreñido.

False friends at work

The second group matters most to the professionals I teach, because these words turn up in meetings and emails and the mistakes are quieter: nobody laughs, the message just lands slightly wrong.

• Compromiso is a commitment or an obligation, and an engagement to marry. A compromise between two positions is un acuerdo or un término medio.
• Eventualmente means possibly or occasionally, not eventually. If the contract will be signed eventually, it will be signed al final or con el tiempo.
• Realizar is to carry out: realizar un proyecto. To realise that something is true is darse cuenta.
• Introducir is to insert or bring in, as with a product or a measure. To introduce a colleague is presentar.
• Pretender is to intend or to aim for. To pretend is fingir.
• Soportar is to bear or put up with. To support a proposal is apoyar.
• Solicitar is to apply for a job or a permit; aplicar is what you do with a rule or a coat of paint.
• Atender is to deal with or to serve: atender a un cliente. Attending a meeting is asistir, as above.
• Resumir is to summarise, and a resumen is a summary; a CV is a currículum. To resume a meeting is reanudar.
• Éxito is success, and suceso is an event or incident. The exit is la salida.
• Discusión usually means an argument. A discussion is una conversación or un debate.
• Carpeta is a folder, on a desk or on a screen. A carpet is una alfombra.

Most of these come up in the first weeks of business Spanish training, because the vocabulary of meetings is exactly where English and Spanish look most alike and agree least.

Everyday words that are not what they seem

Then there are the everyday ones, which are mostly harmless and occasionally memorable.

• Librería is a bookshop; a library is una biblioteca.
• Ropa is clothes, sopa is soup and fábrica is a factory. Rope is cuerda, soap is jabón and fabric is tela.
• Largo means long. Large is grande.
• Recordar is to remember or to remind. To record is grabar.
• Colegio is a school, and lectura is reading; a lecture is una conferencia or una clase.
• Decepción is disappointment and disgusto is upset or annoyance. Deception is engaño; disgust is asco.
• Molestar is to bother or annoy, and nothing worse: perdone que le moleste is a polite “sorry to bother you”.
• Excitado leans towards aroused. Excited about a trip or a new job is emocionado or ilusionado.
• Sano is healthy. Sane is cuerdo.
• Particular means private, which is why one-to-one lessons are clases particulares and a private tutor is un profesor particular.

Words that change meaning across the Atlantic

A second kind of false friend is Spanish with itself. Spanish varies from country to country, and a few everyday words are innocent on one side of the Atlantic and not on the other.

The best known is coger. In Spain it is the ordinary verb for take or catch: coger el autobús, coger el teléfono. In Mexico, Argentina and much of Latin America it is a vulgar word for sex, and people say tomar or agarrar instead. A learner heading for Bogotá or Buenos Aires does well to drop it from the start.

Vale, the Spanish “OK”, is the reverse case: perfectly good in Madrid, and a giveaway of where you learned everywhere else. Argentina says dale, Mexico sale, Colombia listo. None of them is wrong; they simply place you.

Not false friends, but just as awkward

Some of the Spanish an English speaker arrives with was never Spanish at all, or was, sixty years ago, in a cartoon. These are worth leaving at home.

• No problemo is not Spanish. It is no hay problema or sin problema.
• No bueno is not a sentence. No es bueno or no está bien.
• ¡Ay, caramba! and ¡Arriba, arriba! belong to Bart Simpson and Speedy Gonzales. Spanish speakers know both, and neither will make you sound like one of them.
• Hasta la vista exists, but it is rare, and with baby attached it is a film quote. The everyday goodbye is hasta luego.
• Caliente, said of a person, does not mean attractive, and in most countries it means something you did not intend. “I’m hot” in the weather sense is tengo calor; good-looking is guapo or guapa.

The rule behind all of them: if a phrase came to you from a film, an advert or a cartoon, check it before you use it. The opposite problem, Spanish that is correct but stiff, has its own guide: how to sound natural in Spanish.

How to stop false friends tripping you up

Four habits deal with almost all of them.

Learn them in pairs. The false friend on its own is only half the lesson; what you need is the word you meant, so learn embarazada together with avergonzada and actualmente together with en realidad.

Trust context over appearance. A word that looks familiar but makes the sentence odd is probably a false friend; look it up. The Real Academia Española’s dictionary is free and settles it in seconds.

Keep a running list. Every learner has their own set, usually eight or ten words, and writing them down as they are corrected fixes them faster than any exercise.

Speak, and be corrected. Apps and books show you the word; they cannot hear you use the wrong one. The false friends that stick are the ones nobody caught, and a tutor catches them in the sentence in which they happen. The same goes for the small grammar words that trip English speakers, por and para above all.

Questions learners ask

What are false friends in Spanish? Words that look or sound like an English word but mean something different: actual (current), sensible (sensitive), embarazada (pregnant).

How many are there? Several hundred in all, but a core of thirty or forty account for nearly every mistake, and they are the ones on this page.

Do they work in the other direction? Yes. A Spanish speaker learning English falls into the same holes from the other side, saying “I am constipated” for a cold or “assist” for attend. It is the same list, read backwards.

Which false friends matter most at work? Compromiso, eventualmente, realizar, soportar and discusión: the ones that change what a sentence commits you to.

Learning them in London

Living in London, you are not surrounded by Spanish all day, so a false friend can sit in your vocabulary for months without anyone pointing it out. That is the case for private Spanish lessons: an hour or two a week with a native speaker who hears every sentence, at your office or your home, catches the mistake the first time it appears. Once the false friends are out of the way, the next step towards sounding natural is the Spanish expressions that don’t translate into English, which are the other half of the story.

A tutor catches false friends before they become habits. See how private Spanish lessons work.

Read next: Spanish expressions that don’t translate into English (and what they really mean) · Por vs Para in Spanish: The Tiny Words That Cause Big Drama · Spanish can be a very easy language to learn for English speakers