Recruit and Crecer
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
The English recruit and the Spanish crecer (“to grow”) seem like they have nothing to do with each other. But looks can be deceiving!
“Recruit” comes from, via French, the roots re- (“again”) and the Latin crescere, meaning “to grow” — from which we get the Spanish for the same.
Therefore, a recruit is literally a “new growth” — it is how the next generation is reborn!
Interestingly, we also get, from the same root, the English crescent as well.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Hambre – Famine
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in Initial F to H, MN to MBR, Patterns
The Spanish hambre, for “hunger”, makes sense if you know two different patterns.
Firstly, the initial f-to-h pattern: words that began with an f- then a vowel in Latin tended to have the f- turned into an h- when Spanish evolved into Latin. Huir and Fugitive is another example of that pattern.
Secondly, the mn-to-mbr pattern: when the letters in Latin “m” and “n” appear together, often separated by a vowel, they usually became “mbr” as a unit in Spanish.
Thus the f-m-n of famine maps directly to the h-m-b-r of hambre.
- See more of this pattern: Initial F to H, MN to MBR, Patterns
Mentira and Amendment
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
Spanish for “lie” (Mentira) comes from the Latin mandacium for the same, which in turn, comes from the earlier Latin menda for “defect; fault”. But the Latin Menda comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *mend- meaning the same, fault or defect.
Thus, we see an interesting transition over time: a defect turned into a lie. The word took on more and more agency: the problem didn’t just happen; it was an explicit lie!
The same PIE root *mend-, in English, took a different route: via French, it turned into the modern English amend and amendment. Thus, in English, “defect” turned into the more accidental, less bad, “lets make a change!”.
We can see the parallels easily: the m-n-t of mentira map to the (a)-m-n-d of amend. The d- and t- transformation is very common and the sounds are often interchangeable.
We also have the English mendacious which is a direct parallel to mentira… but everyone seems to have forgotten that word.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Guerra and War
The Spanish word for “war”, guerra, doesn’t sound like it would actually be the same word. But it is!
The Latin words beginning with the harsh gu- sound generally have the same root and are parallel with the English w- words. Think, William and Guillermo, for example. The gu- and w- sounds do sound alike if you say both in a thick way.
Guerra and War are another great example of this pattern. The English war comes from the French guerre, which in turn comes from the old German verwirren — meaning “to confuse people.” War is confusing indeed, and confusing people is indeed a form of warfare.
Rezar – Recite
- Posted by Morgan
- on
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
The Spanish for “to pray” is rezar. Although not obvious at first, it is from the Latin recitare, from which we get the English — surprise, surprise — recite. The “cit” grouping was conflated into a “z” sound, so the English (and Latin) r-cit-r maps to the Spanish r-z-r.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Ajedrez – Chess
Ajedrez (Spanish for “chess”) sounds nothing like the English word chess, so they can’t be first cousins… right?
Wrong. The Spanish “j” sound — pronounced with an Arabic-ish throat-clearing sound — was originally pronounced with a “sh” or “ch” sound. The Arabic influence changed the pronunciation to be closer to the Arabic: see sherry/jerez, for example.
Ajedrez and Chess are another example of this same interesting pattern. Try to imagine the “j” in ajedrez with a ch- sound and you almost get chess.
Both, curiously, come from the same Sanskrit word for the game: chaturanga (so the English ch- is thus preserved closer to the original sound — English didn’t have the Arabic influence that Spanish did). And these came to both languages via the Persian, chatrang. The traders and travelers, after all, are the ones who change languages.
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:
Buy the Book!
