The Spanish cara (“head”) comes from the same Latin word (cara), also meaning the same, “head.”
From that Latin, we get the English cheer (via French’s chere). Thus, the ch-r of cheer maps to the c-r of cara.
A face — after all — is the most human thing intended to make us thankful (to cheers a toast!) for life. And most faces fill us with enough happiness to make us cheerful!
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
Here at ForNerds, we love meeting and talking to other people who love learning Spanish, etymologies, and any other topic in nerdy ways. Drop us a note and say hi!
morgan@westegg.com
