Learning Chinese words with similar meanings and appearances is an effective method to expand the vocabulary. However, it is also possible to cause some misunderstandings because the foreign students who just begin to learn Mandarin Chinese may feel confused about the differences among those words. For example, 可爱 and 喜爱 have the same function of showing love to something. They are relatively easy to tell apart because the parts of speech are different. 可爱is an adjective meaning lovely like 孩子的样子很可爱.
However, the word 喜爱is a verb to mean to like or love something or show interest to something like 喜爱游泳. In addition, 可爱is not allowed to be followed by objects and does not collocated with the prepositions like 使、让and叫. On the contrary, 喜爱can takes objects and collocates with those prepositions. Here are two example, 孩子长得白白胖胖的，十分招人喜爱and孩子长得白白胖胖，十分可爱.
Another group of words that the foreign students should pay attention when they learn Chinese is 可贵 and宝贵, both of which are adjectives to show something is valuable. The former one is to express the meaning that something is worthy of stressed or cherished like 在当今社会中，这种精神十分可贵. Usually, it is collocated with the abstract things like spirit, life, quality, behavior or chance.
However, 宝贵is to describe something is precious and valuable because it is not easy to get. The degree is much deeper than 可贵. It can be used to describe both abstract thing and specific things. For example, 人最宝贵的是生命，生命每个人只有一次.
可惜and惋惜seems difficult to tell apart but actually it is easy if you distinguish from the perspective of part of speech. 可惜is an adjective to say something is worthy of being cherished like 东西还没坏，扔了太可惜. But 惋惜is a verb to show sympathy to someone for the unfortunate experience like 关键时刻没能坚持住，真令人惋惜.