Abrir, Spanish for “to open,” comes from the Latin aperire, for the same.

Less obviously, from the same Latin root we get two similar words in English: overt and aperture. Both are openings — and overt is a very metaphorical opening although, etymologically, a literal one!

In overt, we can see the o-v-r map to the a-b-r of abrir, and in aperture the a-p-r map to the a-b-r of abrir.

Marchitar (Spanish for “to fade; to wither”) comes from the Latin marcere (“to decay, wither”) which itself comes from the ancient Proto-Indo-European root merk which also means the same, “to decay, wither.”

From the Proto-Indo-European root merk, we get the English… morning (via Old German — just remember the German morgen!).

Morning, after all, is just the end of the decay of the moon!

The m-r root is clearly visible in both!

The Spanish for “to forget”, olvidar, has an interesting cousin in English: obliterate.

Both come from the same Latin root, obliterare, which means, “to cause to disappear; erase; blot out”, but was used in Latin slang to mean “to be forgotten.” You can see this in the o-v-d of olvidar mapping to the o-(b)-l-t of obliterate.

That which is forgotten is, in a sense, obliterated. As the Greeks reminded us: Chronos was a monster who ate his own children. All shall be forgotten!

Obliterare, in turn comes from the Latin root ob– (“against”) and littera (“letter”). Erasing is really just going against the letter itself, after all!

Pronto (Spanish for “soon”) comes from the Latin promptus, from “brought forth”. From the same word is the English…. prompt.

Thus, we can see the pr-n-t mapping to the pr-m-t, since the n/m are often transformed from one to the other, as languages change.

Both the Spanish cielo (“sky”) and the English celestial come from the same root: the Latin caelestis, meaning, “sky.” The c-l root is evident in both.

Not all patterns are subtle; we just need to make the connection!

The Spanish for “light blue,” celeste, comes from the same root, for a reason so self-evident that it’s not worth saying. Just look up.

Través — in the classic phrase, a través de (“going through”) — comes from the Latin transversus, which is just the prefix trans– (“through”) with vertere (“to turn”).

Here is where it gets interesting. From the same root vertere, we get all of the vert– English words, such as: convert, invert, divert, vertebrae. All do involve turning, in one form or another.

This one doesn’t have a mapping that is easy, since only the v- survives, since the trans– lost the -ns- and the r-t-r of vertere disappeared, leaving us with just… v. But we should remember that the v-, and much more often the v-r or v-r-t is just that something is turning, converting into something else.