Feliz (Spanish for “happiness”) comes from the Latin felix, meaning both “happy” and “fertile”.
It is indeed curious how, linguistically, happiness and having children and plentiful crops are deeply intertwined.
From the same root, we get the English felicity, which we can see in the f-l-z to f-l-c mapping very clearly.
Most distantly, we also have the English fecund and fetus.
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
