The Spanish llamar (to name; commonly used to say “My name is”: “Me llamo” is literally, “I call myself…”) comes from the Latin clamare, meaning “to cry out, shout, proclaim.”
This is an example of the pattern where Latin words beginning in “Cl” are changed to the double-l (“ll”) in Spanish. In English, these words retain the “cl” sound – from the same root we get claim and clamor.
Other examples of this pattern include llave and clef.
The Spanish for “chest”, pecho, sounds completely different than the English chest.
But it is related to the English word for the chest bones: the Pectoral Girdle.
The relationship is the Latin -ct- words transforming into -ch- as Latin turned into Spanish. Thus, the pect- maps to pech- exactly. The English word, on the other hand, is taken – unchanged – directly from the Latin.
Also from the same root, in Spanish, es pechuga — the common word for the common food, “chicken breast”!
The same pattern we see in noche/nocturnal, leche/lactose, etc.
The Spanish Guardar, meaning “to watch over or care for”, and the similar Guardia (the ER! Emergency Room) are both cousins of the English ward and warden. Huh?
Both come from the same Proto-Indo-European root, *wardo, also meaning “to take care of”.
But, as Latin turned into Spanish, the initial W- sound turned into a G- sound but remained the same in English.
Therefore, the Latin-ish G-R-D maps to the Germanic W-R-D. Ahhhh!
Fervor is really just an intense passion heating up. Thus we shouldn’t be surprised that it comes from the Latin root fervere (“to boil”), from which we get the Spanish for the same (“to boil”), hervir.
The seemingly unrelated words are connected through the common transformation of Latin words beginning with an f- into an h- in Spanish, such as fig and higo, and fable and hablar.
Thus, the f-r-v of fervor maps to the h-r-v of hervir.
Today’s link is another gem: despite sounding completely different, “hundred” and ciento are actually the same word. Here’s how.
The ancient Proto-Indo-European root *kmtom meant a hundred. As PIE evolved into Latin, the word stayed basically the same phonetically, turning into centum, and stayed the same (but with a soft-c pronunciation) into the Spanish, ciento.
But as PIE evolved into German, the k-/c- sounds evolved into h- sounds. Think about heart/corazon and hemp/cannabis, for example. 100 followed the same pattern, with the initial k-/c- sound turning into the h-.
Thus, the c-n-t of ciento maps exactly to the h-n-d of hundred. The t/d were interchanged but that’s a very common, similar, and more obvious pattern.
The usual Spanish word for “name”, nombre, is very closely related to the English word nominal, in an interesting way. Not only does nominally mean “relating to the name”, but there is an interesting etymological pattern between the words.
Latin words with an m-n sound usually turned the m-n into an mbr sound as Latin evolved into Spanish. Thus, we see curious patterns like hominem becoming hombre, and the words famine and hambre being closely linked.
The same pattern applies here. The Latin nominalis turned into the Spanish nombre and the English nominal — thus the n-m-n of nominal maps exactly to the n-mbr of nombre!
The Spanish for “night”, noche, is related (via the common Latin ancestor) nocturnal.
Here’s the interesting part: the Latin sound “ct” consistently changed to the “ch” sound in Spanish. Think “lactose” and “leche”, or “octagon” and “ocho”. And this is another example of that pattern: the “ct” in “nocturnal” is the same as the “ch” in “noche”!
The Spanish Decir (“to say”) comes from the Latin dictio for “word”. Its participle form is dicho — and dicho also means “saying”, in the sense of, a cliche.
Thus decir is another example of the “ct” sound in Latin turning into the “ch” sound in Spanish — and is also related to the English word… dictionary.
The English foot comes from the Indo-European root *ped. Think pedal.
Interestingly, the “p” sound consistently transformed into an “f” in the Germanic languages — but remained a “p” in the Latinate languages.
This is why, foot is equivalent to pie.
Other examples of this pattern include father and padre, and the English far is from the same root as the Latin per.
Otoño doesn’t sound much like its English translation, fall (the season). But if we think of the less common synonym, Autumn, then the pattern becomes a bit clearer.
Both come from the Latin for the same, Autumnus. But Latin words with an m-n sound usually became an ñ sound in Spanish. Think of damn and daño, for example. So the a-t-m-n of autumn maps to the o-t-ñ of otoño!
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
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