Did you know you can change the last letter of some Spanish words and get an entirely new word with new meaning and gender?

People

There’s a whole class of words that end in either o or a depending on the gender of the person, such as camarera, camarero, tía, tío, and hermana, hermano. These words aren’t so hard to deal with since the gender corresponds to the person the word represents.

Trees

There’s also a bunch of fruit where the fruit is feminine and the corresponding tree that produces it is masculine. These aren’t too hard to remember either, once you catch on to the pattern. For example:

manzana (apple) – manzano (apple tree)
cereza (cherry) – cerezo (cherry tree)
naranja (orange) – naranjo (orange tree)
almendra (almond) – almendro (almond tree)

The hard part

Now we get to the hard part. Words that end in o or a, and depending on that difference, have a totally or partially different meaning. Watch out for these or you’ll get tripped up.

barranca - ravine, gorge, canyon, cleft
barranco - cliff, precipice, drop-off point, obstacle

bolsa - woman’s purse, bag in general, bolsa de plástico = plastic bag, bolsa (de valores) = stock exchange
bolso - (also bolsillo) – pocket, pants pocket, change purse (also monedero), money bag

braza - fathom (maritime measurement). Don’t confuse this with brasa, which is a red-hot coal.
brazo - arm (anatomy), fork (of a river)

cabecera - header, heading, beginning, head, headboard, headpiece, headline
cabecero - foreman, headboard (of a bed)

cobra - cobra (snake)
cobro - charge, collection (money)

cuenca - wooden bowl, eye socket, valley, river basin
cuenco - earthen bowl, hollow, cavity, depression (in the earth)

fruta - fruit (the pieces of fruit from a plant or tree)
fruto - results, payoff, consequence, benefit, profit, fruit (the yield of a plant or tree)

hoya - dale, hollow, river basin, grave, hole in the ocean’s floor. Not to be confused with olla (cooking pot, stew pot).
hoyo - hole, pit.

libra - pound (weight), constellation Libra
libro - book

manga - sleeve or arm of a shirt or other piece of clothing
mango - the fruit mango, handle (of a tool etc)

poma - pome, apple
pomo - flask, knob, cluster

ribera - shore, bank (of a river etc)
ribero - dike, levee (to hold back water)

ría - river delta, river mouth
río - river

saca - extraction, taking out, bag, sack
saco - sack, bag, sac, plunder, loot, suit coat, suit jacket

There’s probably a lot more of these word pairs as well. Watch out for them as you perfect your Spanish.

It’s obvious I’m a sucker for anything to do with words, so of course I was interested when I ran across an article by Samuel Stoddard where he talks about contronyms. A contronym is a word that is its own antonym- it has two or more meanings that are contradictory.

Here are the first 10 from his long list of contronyms.

• anabasis – military advance, military retreat
• apology – admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do
• aught – all, nothing
• bolt – secure, run away
• by – multiplication (e.g., a three by five matrix), division (e.g., dividing eight by four)
• chuffed – pleased, annoyed
• cleave – separate, adhere
• clip – fasten, detach
• consult – ask for advice, give advice
• copemate – partner, antagonist

Have you heard of homophones? These are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings. English has a lot of homophones, which can make learning English a lot harder than it would have to be.

• boar (wild pig)
• Boer (a South African of Dutch descent)
• boor (tasteless buffoon)
• bore (not interesting)

See Alan Cooper’s list of Homophones for more inspiration.

And that’s the number #1 reason why English is hard to learn.