Estreñimiento means to be constipated.

The stuff you put on your floor is an alfombra.

However, there are times when colegio can be applied to mean college when you are talking about a group, or body, of people. For example: electoral college. Or it can be a professional association such as a college of surgeons. In these cases the Spanish colegio and the English college are interchangeable.

Escuela, however, can be applied to any type of educational institution. It is most commonly used to refer to schools that are pre-college level, but can be used for a college as well. In any way we use school in English, escuela can be used in Spanish.

These are words that will be in greater or lesser use depending on which country you are in. I remember in Peru we used colegio almost exclusively and escuela was almost never used. Here in Mexico we use escuela. While colegio is certainly understood, it is not the preferred word to use when talking about your school.

The usage and description of the word college in English varies greatly as well. It depends on the country you are in. A quick look at the Wikipedia article for college will tell you that even though many countries speak English, we don’t always mean the same thing by the words we use.

Lectura de las palmas would be a palm reading. But, to read is leer. The gerund reading would be leyendo. Therefore lectura is the noun reading, whereas leyendo is the verb in the gerund form, reading.

The phrase darse cuenta is used to mean to realize.

Pedro se dió cuenta que se le olividó su tarea. (Peter realized that he forgot his homework).

The word realizar does not mean to realize. It is a false friend. Realizar means to bring to pass, as in “Bill realized his life long dreams”.

When we were learning this phrase, darse cuenta, I did not realize that it would be so commonly used.

False cognates are two words which have no etymological connection, but are similar in form and meaning. An example of this is the English word day and the Spanish word día. Their root words are different. The English word comes from an Indo-European background before Old English. The Spanish word comes from Latin. It is just a coincidence that they look and sound similar and therefore they are false cognates.

Whereas false friends are words which look or sound similar, but have different meanings. You will see many of these in your study of Spanish. An example would be asistir and atender which mean attend and assist (respectively).

False cognates are really not much of a concern to us as students of Spanish. Whether the words derived from the same source or not, they mean the same thing. It is false friends which we need to be aware of and realize they are there to trip us up.

Assist is to help. This could be used to help another person or it could be a machine that lends support.

Attend is to be present at an event. Outside of the normal thinking of attending a show, it could also be that a fever could attend a cold. A fever is present with the cold. Though not its primary meaning in English, it is used to mean to take care of or give help to as in the example of “the nurse attended the patient.”

In Spanish these words carry the other’s meaning.

Asistir is to be present at, or to regularly attend.

Atender is to help out as in a nurse helping a doctor in surgery.

This is a pair of words that may take a person quite some time to realize that they are using them wrongly. It would be easy to assume that they carry the exact same meaning as they do in English. While both words in English can mean to be present and to help, they each have their primary usage which is opposite their primary usage in Spanish.

In English the word actual means real, or true.

In Spanish the meaning is current, or at this time.

Both of these words carry the root meaning which is something that is currently the fact or truth. Or it can be said that it is something that truly exists at this time, not potential, but real.

This word crops up in every day speech in Spanish when people ask you what your current address is or your current job position. That word current is the word actual. Often in English we say “Actually…” to mean “Well the truth of the matter is…” Whereas in Spanish to say “Actualmente…” would mean, “At the current time…”

Read about the English word Actual at Dictionary.com.