The common Spanish tarde, “late”, is a close cousin of the English retard.
Retard is literally the re- prefix (which just adds emphasis) and the Latin tardare, which means, “slow, stupid.”
From tardare we also get the Spanish tarde. So, the ones that are the stupidest do things slowest — literally!
Of course, we also get the English tardy from the same root as well.
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
