Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Apellido and Repeal

The Spanish apellido, for “last name” (“surname” to the Brits) has a cousin in the English repeal and appeal.

All of these come from the Latin appellare, meaning, “to call.”

The Spanish makes sense: your last name is which tribe the world calls you by!

The English appeal is, indeed, when you call upon a higher authority for help. And repeal is when you call back or push back to those who tried to do something to you.

The p-l mapping is consistent amongst all the variations, with slight changes in spelling (single l vs double l, for example).

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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