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Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Trazar and Trace

The Spanish trazar (“to draw up”) comes from the Latin tractus (“drawing.”) From that same root we get a few English words, including, trace. The t-r-z to t-r-c mapping is very clear here.

What’s more interesting are the other words that come from the Latin tractus. These include:

  • Trait — A trait, after all, is just an outline of your personality
  • Train — Think of the word “draw,” but in the other sense: the horse draws the carriage.
  • Trattoria — The Italian restaurant draws you in with its awesome food!
  • Tract — When you’ve drawn out your borders over land
  • Treat — When you’ve drawn what you want out of the patient

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