The Spanish for “hand,” mano, has a first cousin in the English manufacture.

Manufacture comes from the Latin manus (like in Spanish, also “hand”) and the Latin factura (which is from facere — “to do”, and almost identically in Spanish, with an f-to-h conversion, hacer).

Thus, “manufacturing” is literally, “making by hand” — the work of an artisan!

Also from the Latin for “hand”, and thus still cousins with the Spanish mano is manual as well: manual labor is also work done with your hands–literally.

Rocío (Spanish for “dew,” not to mention its cousin, rociar, “to sprink or spray”) comes the Latin ros (“dew.”)

From that same root, we get the English… rosemary, everyone’s favorite mint! Rosemary in fact comes from the Latin rosmarinus (ros – marinus), the “dew of the sea”!

The r-c of rocío clearly maps to the r-s of rosemary.

Charlar (Spanish for “to chat”) comes from the Italian ciarla — as does the English… charlatan. We can see the ch-r-l root in both easily.

Interestingly, the English word has taken a negative turn while the Spanish, not so much. I would attribute this to the Anglo-Saxon culture’s looking down on talking without action, while the Latin culture’s focus on talking even if it means inaction.

Also from the same root is the English, charade. Charade, like charlatan, contains negative connotations of appearance, not reality.

We get the English cockroach directly from the Spanish cucaracha. We can see the c-c-r-ch pattern in both. There is no Latin, Greek, or German root since it is a New World word.

Although we’ve already discussed the etymology of correr (Spanish for “to run”) and its connection to the English horse, there is another — more obvious — connection that helps us remember it:

Recur. Recur literally comes from the Latin recurrere, meaning “to run back and forth”: re – correr. Yes, that which recurs keeps on running back and forth!