The Spanish Guardar, meaning “to watch over or care for”, and the similar Guardia (the ER! Emergency Room) are both cousins of the English ward and warden. Huh?
Both come from the same Proto-Indo-European root, *wardo, also meaning “to take care of”.
But, as Latin turned into Spanish, the initial W- sound turned into a G- sound but remained the same in English.
Therefore, the Latin-ish G-R-D maps to the Germanic W-R-D. Ahhhh!
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
