One Latin, six daughters
Learn Italian through what you already know
Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan are sisters — the same spoken Latin, worn down six ways — and English borrowed thousands of their words through French and Latin. So whichever of the seven you speak, you already know a huge share of the others: cognates. Cognata shows you which words are cognates, which are false friends, and the regular sound laws that let you guess the rest.
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Pick one or several — they're shown side by side.
Every word, lesson and drill shows Italian first, explained through English. The other sisters stay one glance away.
- nocheSpanish
- nuitFrench
- notteItalian
- noitePortuguese
- noapteRomanian
- nitCatalan
- nightEnglishDistant cognate
Borrowed into English from the same Latin: nocturnal
Start here
A suggested path from your first sound law to full conversations.
- 1Sound lawsLearn the regular sound laws that turn one sister's words into another's.
- 2CognatesThousands of cognates you already know: every word tagged cognate, distant cognate or not related.
- 3GrammarArticles, the past tenses, the subjunctive — six systems side by side.
- 4PhrasesThe same scene lived seven times: dialogues in English and six Romance languages, line by line.
- 5DrillsSpaced-repetition flashcards and quizzes to make it stick.
- 6FlowTrain your mouth: rollable phrases, minimal pairs and backward chaining.
Explore the modules
Each module stands on its own — jump in wherever you like.
Cognates
2,264 wordsEvery word in English and six Romance languages side by side, tagged cognate, distant cognate or not related — with IPA and the Latin it came from.
Open moduleFalse friends
87 false friendsThe words that look like cognates but aren't: embarazada isn't embarrassed, actuel isn't actual. Every trap across the seven languages, with how to tell them apart.
Open moduleSound laws
33 sound lawsThe decoder ring: regular changes from Latin into each sister, with examples, exceptions, and a guessing tip for each.
Open moduleGrammar
24 lessonsSpelling and sound, nouns, verbs and sentences — every rule shown in all six Romance languages at once.
Open modulePhrases
14 dialoguesEveryday scenes — the café, the station, the doctor's — written naturally in each sister, never translated word for word.
Open moduleFamilies
30 familiesOne Latin root, a whole family: the worn-down words the sisters inherited, and the learned ones they borrowed back.
Open moduleMorph
24 word journeysWatch a Latin word turn, sound by sound, into its six Romance descendants — every step sourced.
Open moduleFlow
32 rollablesPhrases built to roll off the tongue in all six sisters, analyzed sound by sound, plus minimal pairs for the contrasts that matter.
Open moduleDrills
Flashcards & quizzesSpaced-repetition flashcards, quizzes, a cognate matching game and a conjugation drill, in each language you're learning.
Open moduleSpeak
Speech recognitionSay it out loud and get instant feedback from your browser's speech recognition.
Open moduleAtlas
Lexical distance & exportThe research view: how close the sisters really are, measured on the whole word bank, with filters and a dataset export.
Open moduleDaily goal
Earn XP by practicing. Reach your goal every day to keep your streak going.
Your progress
Spaced-repetition reviews across sound laws and vocabulary, saved on this device.
Cognates you already know
Words you can (almost) guess from English — a fresh handful on every visit.