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Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Hincha – Inflation

The Spanish hinchar means “to inflate, puff up” and from it we get the much more common Spanish hincha meaning: “a fan”. A fan, therefore, is literally someone who puffs up over his team!

Interestingly, hinchar is directly related to inflate, in a subtle way: both come from the Latin inflare meaning the same as hinchar.

How did this word evolve into something so different? It’s not so different as it sounds if we remember that the Spanish h- is silent: so the in-ch-a maps closely to the in-fl-a. The ch/fl mapping isn’t common at all, but if we sound it out, we can hear that they sound similar.

Next time you get all excited about your favorite team, remember that this excitement of making more and more is exactly what causes… inflation.

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