Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Iglesia and Ecclesiastical

Both Iglesia (Spanish for “church”) and Ecclesiastical (also similar English words: think of the book of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes) come from the same root: the Latin Ecclesĭa for “church”, which comes from the Greek ekkalein (“to call out”). After all, a preacher does call out to God. That is his vocation, what he professes!

This pattern is not obvious because both the Spanish i-g-l-s maps to the English e-c-l-s. The I/E vowel shift isn’t particularly common while the g/c vowel shift is more common, but sometimes harder to recognize.

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:

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