Haber (“to have”, in the grammatical sense, and the root form of he, has, ha, hemos, etc) comes from the Latin for habere, meaning “to hold.”
From the same root, we get the English word habit. What is a habit if not something you hold so dearly that you do it all the time? We also get prohibit (the same root with the prefix pro meaning “away”). What is a prohibition if not a habit that you’re trying to stop?
The h-b root is so obvious in all, it’s almost not worth mentioning. Almost!
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
