“Parents” vs “Parientes”: Don’t Confuse Your Relatives
Quick Answer:
This is a classic false friend.
parents in English = mother and father
parientes in Spanish = relatives / family members in general, not specifically parents
So if you want to say parents in Spanish, the usual word is padres, not parientes.
Examples:
Correct English
✅ My parents live in Bogotá.
Here, parents means mother and father.
Correct Spanish
✅ Mis padres viven en Bogotá.
This is the normal way to say my parents in Spanish.
Correct Spanish for relatives
✅ Mis parientes viven en varias ciudades.
Here, parientes means relatives, not specifically parents. The RAE defines pariente as a person who has a family relationship with another person.
Common mistake
❌ My parientes are visiting this weekend.
✅ My relatives are visiting this weekend.
If you mean the broader family, relatives is the correct English word.
Common Mistake:
The most common mistake is assuming that parientes must mean parents because the words look so similar.
It doesn’t.
That is exactly what a false friend is: two words from different languages that look alike but mean different things. Cambridge defines a false friend as a word that is often confused with a word in another language because they look or sound similar.
Another common mistake is forgetting that Spanish already has a much more specific word for parents:
padres = parents
parientes = relatives
Quick Tip:
Use this memory rule:
parents = padres
parientes = relatives
A simple shortcut:
If you mean just your mother and father, do not use parientes.
Use:
parents in English
padres in Spanish
If you mean the wider family, then:
relatives in English
parientes in Spanish