Have you ever come across Spanish words that sound similar but have totally different meaning? There are a few of them, and they are usually hard to remember.  If you take a look at this comic strip, you will find a bunch of these funny pairs. Most of the times, the difference has to do with the gender of the noun: masculine or feminine. Even though there are times where the the words are  related somehow (they may have the same etymology, for example), there are big differences of meaning between the two of them.

This is what happens in puerto and puerta, where puerto (masculine) means harbour and puerta (feminine) means door.

If you want to find out more Spanish words that sound similar but have different meanings, don’t hesitate to take a look at Munguía’s works, where the cartoonist has made a compilation of those pairs of confusing nouns or Parejas disparejas (as well as other word games) by drawing them in a very funny way. Remember that, in Spanish, most of the nouns ending in -o are masculine and most nouns ending in -a are feminine, but not always: there’s a huge list of exceptions: el problema, la mano, el mapa, el tema… 

And, if you want to know more, don’t hesitate to try one of ELINQUA’s Spanish online lessons, that you will be able to take quickly and easily, without moving from your couch and just with an Internet conection and a Skype account.