Semana (Spanish for “week”) comes from the Latin septimana for the same. Septimana itself comes from the Latin root septem meaning… seven. There are, after all, seven days in the week–by definition!

From the same root, we get the English September. But something isn’t right. Isn’t September the ninth month, not the seventh month? Huh?

The fascinating explanation is that the ancient calendar had ten months, the first of which is… March. So, the numbering is all two behind. This explains not only why September is two off, but so is October (from the root oct- meaning “eight”, not “ten”) as well as November (nov– for “nine”, not “eleven”) and December (dec– for “ten”, not “twelve.”)

The Spanish correr, “to run,” comes from the Latin for the same: currere.

In a “It’s not obvious until you realize it, then it’s completely obvious moment!”, this is related to the English: current.

Although current obviously does not share the same literal meaning of running, conceptually it is very similar: what is happening right now is what is running or flowing by.

So time doesn’t fly; it flows past, right now — literally.

Not to mention, think of the way they always talk about electricity: the running current.

Huevo (Spanish for “egg”) comes from the Latin ovum for the same. From that Latin root, we get the English… ovaries. The ue-v of huevo clearly maps to the o-v of ovary! The eggs are both literal and metaphorical!

From the same root we also get ovulate and even… oval An egg is oval, isn’t it?

The Spanish involucrar (“to get involved with”) comes from the Celtic voloper (“to wrap up.”) Isn’t getting “involved” with something just getting yourself wrapped up in it?

From that same Celtic root, we also get the English… envelope. An envelope just wraps up the letter, right? It even envelops it!

We can see the i-n-v-l of involucrar maps to the e-n-v-l of envelope.