The Spanish madero, for “wood”, sounds random, doesn’t it?
But it is more obvious than it sounds: it comes from the Latin root materia, which means “the substance from which something is made; inner wood of a tree.”
From this Latin word materia, we get the English words material and matter. At least metaphysically, they are what stuff is made of, aren’t they?
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
