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Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Salir, Saltar – Assault, Salient

Salir, the common Spanish word meaning, “to leave” sounds like it has nothing to do with anything. Or does it?

Salir comes from the Latin salire meaning the same, “to jump”. Surprise, surprise.

From this same Latin root was get a bunch of fun English words, including:

  • Assault — an assault is literally someone jumping out at you!
  • Assail — the same as an assault!
  • Salient — that which stands out at you is, literally, that which jumps out at you!

We also get another Spanish word from the same root: saltar (“to jump”). You can see the s-l mapping across all descendants of the word!

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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For Nerds Learning Spanish via Etymologies