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Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Engaño – Ingenuous, Genesis, Genius

Engañar is the common Spanish word meaning “to deceive” and is especially common in its meaning of “to cheat on [a spouse or girl/boyfriend].”

But who would have thought its related to the English ingenuous?

Both are, after all, forms of naïveté.

Both come from the Latin root gen-, meaning “to produce”. Think, genesis. After all, in the beginning, everything and everyone was naive.

Via the Greek parallels and Latin descendants, we get a myriad of modern words, including: genus and genius. There is a certain genius in deceiving, of course.

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