Posted by
Morgan on
Nov 12, 2022 in
CL to LL, Patterns, Spanish

The Latin words that began with “cl” changed, pretty consistently, to “ll” as Latin changed into Spanish.
Today’s example of this: the Latin word for “key” was clavis. This became the modern Spanish word for “key”, llave.
There are, however, a few interesting other descendants of clavis, and thus distant relatives of llave. They include:
- the Spanish clavo, meaning, “nail”. It’s a more educated word, coming to Spanish via Latin scholars later on, so it didn’t lose the natural cl- sound the way the traditional words did.
- English words like clef and enclave. Yes, in music you talk about the “key” and the “clef” and they come from the same word originally!