Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Frenar and Refrain

Frenar (Spanish for, “to break”, particularly in the sense of, “to stop” — think of, the breaks on your car!) comes from the Latin frenare, meaning, “to restrain,” which itself is from the old Latin frenum for “birdle” — yes, the mouthpiece you put on a horse to, umm, restrain it.

From that same root, we get the English refrain. It is the same frenare root, with the re– added for emphasis. But we have the -ain spelling because it comes into English via French, with the refraigner, of course. We can see the f-r-n maps to the (re)-f-r-n very clearly as well.

The lesson here is: from restraining someone from doing something (the old sense of the word) to refraining completely from doing it (the new sense of the word) is just a minor step. At least linguistically.

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:

Buy the Book!

For Nerds Learning Spanish via Etymologies

Want To Know More?

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

Buy the book!