Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Abrir and Overt, Aperture

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 and Morning

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!

Olvidar and Obliterate

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 and Prompt

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.

Cielo and Celestial

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 and Convert

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.

Esconder and Abscond

Esconder (Spanish for “to hide”) comes from the Latin ab– (“away”) and condere (“to put together”). Hiding is, after all, just a form of putting yourself away from everyone else!

From the same root we get the less common English abscond, “to secretly run away to avoid capture.” That is just hiding–but taken to the extreme!

Vendimia and Vintage

The Spanish vendimia (“a harvest of wine”) comes from the Latin vinum (“wine” — from which we get words like vino — “wine” — in Spanish) combined with demere, which meant, “to take out”. So the wine harvest is literally, the taking out of the wine.

The interesting part is that, from these same two roots, we get the English… vintage. You may think of vintage cars or vintage clothing — but it really does just refer to taking out wine.

We can see the v-n-d of vendimia maps to the v-n-t of vintage.

Predecir – Predict, Diction

An easy way to remember the Spanish decir (to say) is through the word predict.

Predict is, literally, pre – decir — to say beforehand. Pre means “before” and the dict- maps almost exactly to the Spanish decir.

How come the decir needs an extra -t in it to be predict? Because the Latin predecire took the grammatical form of predicatus and this form grew into English (via the French influence). A prediction in Spanish, after all, is predicho!

Thus, it is a cousin of many English words such as diction and dictionary.

Ocho and Octagon

The Latin for “eight” is Octo, from which we get the English Octagon.

Since most Latin words with a -ct- sound, like Octo, had the -ct- turn into a -ch- as the language evolved into Spanish, it is no surprise that eight in Spanish is ocho.

This same pattern manifests itself in noche/nocturnal, leche/lactose, and is one of our favorite patterns here at ForNerds!

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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