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Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Asunto and Assumption

Asunto (Spanish for “subject,” in the sense of, “theme”) comes from the Latin for the same, assumptus (“taken”) — from which we get the almost identical English, assume.

Interestingly, assumption originally had a fully religious connotation, something we often forget, or I sometimes vaguely remember today: you’re received into heaven. An assumption, in its modern sense, is really just a religious belief actually!

The Latin root assumptus itself comes from ad– (“up, to”) and sumere (“to take”) — so when you assume, you’re really “taking it up”!

The a-s-t of asunto maps clearly to the a-ss-(m)-t of assumption.

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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For Nerds Learning Spanish via Etymologies