The Spanish for “throat” garganta sounds completely unrelated to any similar word in English.
But it is actually a close cousin of both gargoyle and gargle.
All come from the Latin gula, meaning “throat”. You do gargle with your throat… and a gargoyle — although we associate it with the demon statues in churches — is, literally, a water spout. Yes, water used to spout out of the mouths of the gargoyles!
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
