Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Traer and Traction, Tractor

The Spanish traer, meaning “to bring,” comes from the Latin trahere, meaning “to drag.”

From the Latin root, we also get a few related English words that aren’t obvious at first glance:

  • Tractor: What is a tractor if not a machine that brings or drags machinery around the plot of farmland?
  • Traction: What is traction if not something moving so quickly that it drags everyone else up along with it?

Note that the -h- vanished when the Latin turned into Spanish but became a -ct- when the Latin became English. Thus the t-r-[nothing] of traer maps to the t-r-ct of the English words.

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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