I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for the winners of the English speakers cognate challenge.

Here are the cognates that I found, but some are more obvious than others:

1. bilingüe = bilingual
2. no= no   lol that shouldn’t even be listed
3. segundo= second, but not everyone may have recognized that one
4. blog, of course.  Unless there is another word for it in Spanish that I don’t know.
5. consistentemente= consistently.  That might be too obscure.  An interesting grammatical tidbit, if you think grammar is interesting, is virtually every word in Spanish that ends in “-mente” is an adverb.  It’s like “-ly” in English.  So cool.
6. errores= errors
7. obligatorio = obligatory
8. Completas= Complete
9. experiencia= experience
10. colegio refers to high school not college, in case anyone was wondering about that one
11. estudiantes= students
12. forma= form
13. tortura= torture
14. día= day

Side note:  Man, I’m getting bored typing all of these words.  A kazillion kudos to those of you who chose to participate.  I think of my blog as a conversation.  So in my head this would have gone faster.  

15. partes= parts

16. con entusiasmo= enthusiastically but you probably saw enthusiasm

17. I’ve given up trying to format this list properly.

18. maravilloso= marvelous

19. humanos normales= normal humans aka regular non-magic people like us

20. pronunciación= pronunciation

I give up.  Phew!  There are more in the titles, but I’m done.   I apologize for putting anyone through that.  I didn’t count words like “uno” which I think everyone knows is “one.”  And there are a couple of false cognates, meaning they appear to be the same in both languages but aren’t exactly.

a) primero= first, not primer, but those words are connected

b) mejor= better or best, not major.

OKAY – So first of all, THANK YOU for participating in this!  I truly didn’t think it would be so time-intensive.  My idea was for those of you who have no knowledge of Spanish to see if you could get the gist of the blog.

I’m giving FIRST PLACE to gingerbread76@wordpress.com. You weren’t 100% correct but you got a lot and really tried to decipher more.  I’m impressed!   Berthold Gambrel , you had a lot too, but you get SECOND PLACE because you used phrases and sentences and I didn’t want to have a parsing smack-down between you and Gingerbread76.  Paul , you made a humourous attempt and always make me laugh, so you get THIRD PLACE.  And you have to give me credit for bowing to your Canadian erroneous English and adding the “u” in humourous.  American Paul, you get FOURTH PLACE by participating, albeit sarcastically and humorously by recognizing “Harry Potter” haha.

HONORABLE MENTION goes to Aaron for reading my nonsense and being honest that he read it but wasn’t about to put up with the typing.  Aaron, I don’t blame you and I thank you.

SPECIAL CATEGORY goes to storyteaching for your outstanding list.  You win SPECIAL CATEGORY because you have good Spanish skills which gave you a leg up.  But I’m very impressed.

By the way, the gist was that I really liked the first Harry Potter book, which in every country except the United States was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.  In the US it’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  I read at the time that the publishers felt that Americans weren’t savvy enough to be enticed by Philosopher’s but would understand Sorcerer’s.  So insulting.

Again, thanks to all of you.   I promise that the next one I write in Spanish won’t include homework for you guys. ❤