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Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Borracho and Inebriated

The fun, and everyday, Spanish word borracho is…. drunk. Although it sounds nothing like the English “drunk” it does have a subtle cousin in English: inebriated. Although they don’t look the same, we can see the parallel if we look with squinted eyes:

The b-r-ch root of borracho maps to the b-r in (in)-b-r-t. The English version sounds more Latinate because we added the in- prefix for emphasis at the beginning.

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