The Spanish espalda (“back”, meaning the part of your body where your spine is!) comes from the Latin spatula meaning also “back” (same sense) or “short wooden blade.”
It’s hard to predict what English word came from the same root? Spatula! It’s easy to see how this evolved: a short wooden blade can look like your shoulder. (Hence the French word for “shoulder” is épaule!)
The s-p-t of spatula maps clearly to the s-p-(l)-d of espalda.
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
