The “-TION to -CIÓN” Trick: Instantly Learn 1000+ Spanish Words 🇪🇸💡
If you speak English, you already know thousands of Spanish words — you just don’t realize it yet! One of the most powerful hacks in Spanish vocabulary is the “-TION → -CIÓN” rule.
This simple pattern allows you to instantly recognize and understand over 1000 Spanish words, without memorization. Once you learn it, you’ll start seeing these words everywhere — in news articles, songs, or even product labels.
🧠 The Secret Rule
When an English word ends in “-tion”, in Spanish it almost always becomes “-ción”.
For example:
- nation → nación
- education → educación
- attention → atención
It’s that easy!
Of course, you’ll need to adjust the pronunciation slightly — the accent mark (´) shows where the stress goes, usually on the final syllable: na-ción, edu-ca-ción.
🗣️ Why This Works
Both English and Spanish borrowed thousands of words from Latin, especially nouns that describe actions or concepts. In Latin, these words ended in “-tio” (for example, natio, educatio, creatio).
When English adopted them, they became “-tion”, and in Spanish, “-ción.”
So, it’s not a coincidence — it’s the same family tree of words!
This means that recognizing patterns instead of memorizing isolated vocabulary is the key to learning faster. That’s exactly the philosophy behind LingoBingo — turning language learning into a fun pattern-spotting game instead of endless repetition.
📋 20 Common Examples
| English | Spanish |
|---|---|
| nation | nación |
| education | educación |
| attention | atención |
| creation | creación |
| information | información |
| communication | comunicación |
| celebration | celebración |
| situation | situación |
| invitation | invitación |
| decoration | decoración |
| action | acción |
| collection | colección |
| organization | organización |
| publication | publicación |
| generation | generación |
| motivation | motivación |
| transportation | transportación |
| vacation | vacación |
| translation | traducción |
| conversation | conversación |
🎯 Practice Time
Let’s test what you’ve learned! Try to convert the following English words into Spanish.
(Remember the rule: “-tion” → “-ción”)
🔍 Bonus Tip: Watch Out for Exceptions!
Not every word ending in -tion follows this rule, though most do. Some English words don’t have a direct Spanish equivalent, or they use a different suffix:
- question → pregunta (not cuestión, which means a topic or issue)
- motion → movimiento
- location → ubicación (✅ still fits!)
So the rule is not 100%, but it’s close enough to give you an instant head start with thousands of words.
🚀 Takeaway
If you see an English word ending in -tion, try replacing it with -ción — chances are, you’ll guess the Spanish word correctly!
This is the magic of language patterns — instead of memorizing, you decode the logic of the language.
Next time you see words like organization, celebration, or information, your brain will instantly recognize their Spanish twins: organización, celebración, información.
That’s how you build vocabulary faster — the smart way.
✅ Ready for more?
Play the full LingoBingo game on lingobingo.app and discover hundreds of other patterns that make Spanish learning fun, visual, and addictive.