How to Explode your Spanish Vocabulary Well Beyond its Borders

One of the biggest problems for Spanish beginners is how to learn a large amount of vocabulary in the shortest time possible. Well, there are no quick solutions, but here are some patterns to help identify, write and learn Spanish words with more ease...

1) English words that end in -sion or -ssion change to -sión
Examples:
Commission = Comisión
Confession = Confesión
Illusion = Ilusión
Session = Sesión
Television = Televisión
Mission = Misión

2) English words that end in -tion change to -ción
Examples:
Sensation = Sensación
Creation = Creación
Nation = Nación
Invention = Invención
Liberation = Liberación
Preposition = Preposición
* Do be careful because there are some false friends between Spanish and English out there. For example, the Spanish word for Pollution is not polución, but rather contaminación.

3) English words that end in -ity and -ty change to -idad and -tad
Examples:
Liberty = Libertad
Fraternity = Fraternidad
Clarity = Claridad
Obscurity = Obscuridad
Opportunity = Oportunidad

4) English words that end in –ure change to –ura.
Examples:
Structure = Estructura
Culture = Cultura
Overture = Obertura

Here are a few examples to try on your own:

When it come to writing Spanish words, remember these key rules: Spanish rarely has double consonants, so in the word Commission you need to drop an M and an S. Similarly, you would change Illusion to Ilusión, dropping one of the Ls. Also, words in Spanish can not start with St-, Sc- or Sp-; therefore, the word structure changes not to structura but to estructura.

Of course, you will need to be careful because some words in Spanish do not follow these rules, but you will find that the majority do. With simple guidelines like this, Spanish becomes more visual to an English speaker because the English structures can help reinforce the Spanish ones.