Spanglish – A hybrid language combining words and idioms from both Spanish and English. Example: ‘Martinez switched back and forth from English to Spanish to Spanglish’ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spanglish
Both English and Spanish belong to the Indo-European group of languages, and the Norman invasions to the British Isles in the Middle Ages provided a French (Romance language) influence to English; hence, there are frequent similarities to Spanish, also a Romance language. For this reason, speakers of one of these languages, while learning the other, might recognize words in their native language that are similar to the one they are learning, and when they have in fact the same meaning in both languages, they are called simple cognates. However, there are some cases when the words have more than one meaning, and will not always translate correctly; these are called multiple cognates. Even worse, some words might sound similar, but mean something completely different, and are called false cognates. Simple cognates can be helpful in conversation to fill a gap when a word is not known, and are very easy to memorize afterwards (animal, simple, etcétera); sometimes they might contribute to Spanglish if the word is slightly different, but will still work, for example: “mi español es perfect.” Multiple cognates will work, but only sometimes, depending on which meaning is applied (“asistir una clase” means “to attend a class”, while “asistir en una clase”, means to “help with, or assist a class”). False cognates must be avoided, since meanings are always different, and the situation could even become embarrassing (“embarazada” means “pregnant”, by the way!)
My Slice of Mexico 