The Spanish “Huir” comes from the same Latin root as “fugitive”, “fugitivus”, meaning, “to flee”.
Pattern: Latin words that began with an ‘F’ tended to lose that initial ‘F’ sound and became silent (yet represented in writing with an ‘H’) as vulgar Latin turned into Spanish.
The Spanish for “son”, hijo, doesn’t sound like anything in English. But it is a close cousin of the English synonym for brotherliness: filial.
Both come from the Latin for “son,” filius. The transformation to Spanish came about through two interesting patterns: the initial f- in Latin usually turned into an h- in Spanish (such as, hacer and fact, or hablar and fable). The other pattern is less common: the -li- sound turned into a -j- sound – it’s just a less common sound! Thus the f-li maps to h-j almost exactly.
From the Latin filius, we get a few other English words, including: affiliate: an affiliate is, in a way, a child you rear!
From the same root we also get the English fetus, fecund and even feminine. These come, via the Latin filius, from the Proto-Indo-European root *dʰeh₁y-li-os, meaning, “sucker” — in the literal sense of, “one who sucks.” Children, indeed, are defined by their sucking their mothers; so your hijo is literally, “the one who sucks.” And, some might argue, even affiliates themselves usually do suck!
A coward is one who turns his tail and runs: literally!
The English coward comes from the old French coart. Coart, in turn, comes from coe, meaning “tail” (from the Latin, coda for the same), plus the -art suffix just refers to a person doing that (think, braggart). A coward shows you his tail and turns the other way!
Interestingly, from the Latin coda, we also get the Spanish for tail, cola. And from the French coart, we get the Spanish word for coward, cobarde.
Trapo is the common Spanish word for “cloth” or, more commonly, “rag”.
It sounds nothing like the similar words in English, except… it turns out to be a close cousin of drape & drapery.
All come from the same old Irish word, drapih, meaning, “garment.”
We can see the parallel in the t-r-p and d-r-p mapping. Both are the same roots except for the t/d shift, which is a very common and not-noteworthy transition.
A drape, after all, is a form of cloth.
Cola — Spanish for “tail” and, more informally, “ass” — comes from the Latin for the same: coda.
Coda itself has come into English in two ways. First, coda is a music term meaning… the end! The tail is the end of the animal!
More interestingly, from coda we also get the English, coward. The Latin coda became coe– in French, dropping the -d-; and an -ard is just a person, put negatively (bastard!). Thus, a coward is literally: someone who turns his tail and runs!
Ganar (Spanish for “to win”) comes from the old Germanic root waidanjan, meaning “to hunt”. From the same root, via French, we get the English… gain.
The g-n pattern is clearly visible in both.
Interestingly, this is almost an example of the w- to g- pattern, like guerra and war. It has the original w- root in the original word but the modern words, in both Spanish and English, use the g- sound (since the English word came indirectly from Latin via French).
The Spanish mancha (“spot” or “stain”) comes from the Latin word for the same, macula.
From the Latin macula, we get the English… immaculate — which literally means (knowing the negation prefix of im-) “without a stain.” So the immaculate conception truly was perfect!
How this sound changed was interesting: often Latin words with a ct- or cl- or other hard letters after a c- sound turn into a suave ch in Spanish. For a distant example, see duct and ducha, or nocturnal and noche. (The ct- is much more common than the cl-, but they’re cousins!) Thus, we can see the m-ch of mancha mapping to the (im-)m-cl of immaculate.
The Spanish pudrir, “to rot,” has a surprising connection to the English, foul, a word meaning the same but sadly very underused these days — although still when quoting Macbeth: fair is foul and foul is fair!
Both come from the same Indo-European root *pu, meaning, “to rot.”
But the English one sounds so different because, in the Germanic branch of Indo-European, the p- sound turned into the f- sound. But not in the Latin branch.
Thus, the initial f+vowel of foul maps to the initial p+vowel of pudrir.
From the same root are more fun words including defile, putrid, and pus. What wonderful imagery!
Parto (Spanish for “birth”) comes from the Latin partus, “brought forth”. That makes sense: a baby is just brought forth into the world.
From the same Latin root, we get the English partum for “birth”. But that word is really only used in one contemporary word today: post-partum depression, the depression a woman gets after childbirth. Yes, post-partum is merely “after-birth”.
The p-r-t root is clearly visible in both words.
Okay, put the Spanish for “moon”, Luna, being related to Lunatic, in the category of, “It’s so obvious you never realized it until someone once pointed it out to you!”.
Nighttime has historically, since ancient times, been associated with danger and the crazy riskiness that comes alongside it. This is manifested in many forms, including the Luna/Lunatic parallel.
Think, also, about parallel English cliches like, “shooting for the moon”: someone who is trying something that is so risky and unlikely to succeed that you must be insane to even try it!
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
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