Charlar and Charlatan
- Posted by Morgan
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- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
Charlar (Spanish for “to chat”) comes from the Italian ciarla — as does the English… charlatan. We can see the ch-r-l root in both easily.
Interestingly, the English word has taken a negative turn while the Spanish, not so much. I would attribute this to the Anglo-Saxon culture’s looking down on talking without action, while the Latin culture’s focus on talking even if it means inaction.
Also from the same root is the English, charade. Charade, like charlatan, contains negative connotations of appearance, not reality.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Tamaño and Magnificent
Tamaño (Spanish for “size,” in the size of, “what is your pants size?”) comes from the Latin tam – magno, that is, “so – great” (“great” in the size of “big”). Tam is the Latin for “so” or “very” from which we get the Spanish tan.
To even measure is thus to imply that… you are big! So great! If you’re small, after all, you don’t even need to measure it!
Magno (Latin for “great” or “big”) gives us the English… magnificent. But, curiously, the –gn– turns into the ñ as Latin evolved into Spanish. Thus tan – magno became tamaño. We see this gn to ñ pattern in many words, such as cognate / cuñado.
Cucaracha and Cockroach
- Posted by Morgan
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- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
We get the English cockroach directly from the Spanish cucaracha. We can see the c-c-r-ch pattern in both. There is no Latin, Greek, or German root since it is a New World word.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Correr – Recur
- Posted by Morgan
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- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
Although we’ve already discussed the etymology of correr (Spanish for “to run”) and its connection to the English horse, there is another — more obvious — connection that helps us remember it:
Recur. Recur literally comes from the Latin recurrere, meaning “to run back and forth”: re – correr. Yes, that which recurs keeps on running back and forth!
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Cinco – Five
The relation between “five” in Spanish (cinco) and English is one of the more surprising relationships: they are indeed direct second cousins!
Both come from the same Proto-Indo-European root, *penkwe, meaning the same, five. (The greek for five also comes from the same: think about pentagon, for example).
The interesting part is this: the p- sound in Proto-Indo-European evolved into the Germanic and then English f- sound. Think about father and padre, for example or foot and pie. Five and cinco follow this pattern too, but in a more subtle way.
The Proto-Indo-European for the same, *penkwe, evolved into the Latin word for “five”: quinque. The qu- was pronounced in a hard way like a k- and then, as Latin evolved into Spanish, the k- was softened into the soft c- in cinco. So p- to k- to c-. You can see it through the similar sounds.
Indeed, the pattern is most obvious in the repetition of the sounds in both words cin-co as the c/k sound twice, at the start of each syllable. And the fi-ve as the f- sound (and its closely related, usually identical and often interchangeable sound of v-) at the start of each of its syllables as well.
Cargarse and Caricature
- Posted by Morgan
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- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
Cargarse (Spanish for, “to take charge”; a very common word, often used in the sense of, assigning or accepting responsibility) comes from the Latin carrus, meaning, cart.
How did this evolution happen? Easy: you load a cart; the cart takes on the burden; just as you, by accepting responsibility, are taking on a burden, too. In other words, any action you might need to be responsible for achieving is just like the annoying junk in your trunk, holding down the car!
From the same Latin root, we get the English, caricature. You can see the c-r root in both. The word for “cart” turned into caricature because, well, a caricature is an overloading (!). A caricature, then, is literally just piling on more and more needless extra, exaggerated observations into the picture you paint, until your trunk is similarly burdened down!
Funny how, in English, over-loading a car is an exaggeration, a caricature. But in Spanish, it is just the normal way of taking responsibility.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
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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