The Spanish for “to teach,” enseñar comes from the Latin insignare (“to mark”). From the same Latin root, we get the English to sign — signing, after all, is making your mark upon a paper!
But how did signing turn into teaching, in Spanish? Well, think about the English expression… to make a mark on someone. A great teacher truly leaves a lasting mark on you — literally.
The s-ñ of enseñar maps to the s-gn of “sign,” with the ñ turning into a gn in English, as it commonly does.
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
