Tarde and Retard
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
The common Spanish tarde, “late”, is a close cousin of the English retard.
Retard is literally the re- prefix (which just adds emphasis) and the Latin tardare, which means, “slow, stupid.”
From tardare we also get the Spanish tarde. So, the ones that are the stupidest do things slowest — literally!
Of course, we also get the English tardy from the same root as well.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Vaca and Vaccine
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
The Spanish for “cow” vaca, comes from the Latin vacca, meaning the same. From that same root, we get the English…. vaccine/em.
Huh? How?
Interestingly, the first, umm, vaccine, was to give the cow-pox virus to people with small-pox! Thus, the word for cow turned into the word for vaccine!
We can see the v-c root clearly in both.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Valija – Valise
In some of the Spanish words, they say maleta to mean “suitcase.” But in other parts, such as Argentina, they say valija.
Valija, although it sounds different from any English word, actually is quite similar to the almost-forgotten–my grandparents still use it!– English word, that also means “suitcase” , of valise.
Although they sound different, the connection becomes clear if we remember the pattern of the sh- to j- conversion: Latin words that had a sh- sound tended to turn into the j- sound in Spanish. Think of sherry/jerez.
In this case, the French valise entered English unchanged but when the French word entered into Spanish, it was Spanish-ified with the s- sound turning into a j- sound. Thus, the v-l-s maps to the v-l-j.
Docente and Educate
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
Docente, Spanish for “teacher,” comes from the Latin docere, meaning, “to teach”. From the same root, we get the English… education. The parallel becomes clear when we observe the d-c root in all of the variations.
The Latin root, Docere, however, is first cousins with ducere, meaning… “to lead.”
To teach is thus to lead — literally. Even more specifically, education is the ducere root, but beginning with the prefix ex-, meaning, “out of”: To teach is to lead out of (the darkness of ignorance)!
But it gets better: from the same root is to lead in a different direction… to seduce: sub- (Latin for, “away from”) plus ducere. To seduce is thus to lead away from where you should be!
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Empujar and Push
The Spanish empujar (“to push”) has the same common ancestor as the English for the same, push: the Latin pulsare.
Pulsare meant, in Latin, “to beat”. A push is a sort of beat, in both senses: a punch and, a punch happening over and over again!
From the same root we also get the English, to pulse, of course. As does… impulse. Yes, an impulse is indeed a strong punch!
The sound here is a variation of the sh-to-j pattern, where variations of the s/x/sh/soft-g sound in Latin turned into the “j” in Spanish (via the Arabic influence) but remained the same as it transformed from Latin into educated English. Hence the “sh” sound in “push”!
Calor and Calm
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
The Spanish for “hot”, calor, sounds nothing like the English for the same.
But it does have a surprising relationship with the English calm.
Both come from the Latin cauma, which means “the heat of the sun in the middle of the day”. (What a specific concept! We need an English word for the same!). Cauma comes from the Latin calere, “to be hot.”
Thus, the word for heat has turned into, in English, the word for tranquility: calm! The heat, indeed, does calm us down!
We can see the pattern clearly if we map the root c-l of calor to the c-l of calm. The silent “l” in calm makes this less obvious than it should be!
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
what is the etymological way to learn spanish?
Nerds love to pattern-match, to find commonalities among everything. Our approach to learning languages revolves (the same -volve- that is in “volver”, to “return”) around connecting the Spanish words to the related English words via their common etymologies – to find the linguistic patterns, because these patterns become easy triggers to remember what words mean. Want to know more? Email us and ask:
morgan@westegg.com
patterns to help us learn spanish:
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