No one quite knows the origin of zapato, Spanish for “shoe.” But the same word — or words from the same root — are still used in Portuguese, French, Italian, and even Arabic and, most shocking of all, Basque (shocking since Basque is unrelated to any other known language).

Most interesting, though, is that from the old French for shoe, savate, which is from the same root as zapato as we can see with the z-p to s-v mapping, do we get the English, sabotage.

Indeed, they say sabotage comes from the word for “shoe” since French workers used to throw their (wooden) shoes into machinery in order to sabotage their factory.

Naufragar (Spanish for “to be shipwrecked”) comes from the Latin Navis meaning “boat.” From that same root we get the English… navigation and navy. The n-v root is clearly visible in all of them.

Almuerzo (Spanish for “lunch”) comes from the Latin morsus, “a small bite.” Lunch is just a really small bite of food!

From the same root morsus, we also get the English for a small bit of food: a morsel. Ahhh! The (al)-m-r-z of almuerzo maps to the m-r-s of morsel.

Asunto (Spanish for “subject,” in the sense of, “theme”) comes from the Latin for the same, assumptus (“taken”) — from which we get the almost identical English, assume.

Interestingly, assumption originally had a fully religious connotation, something we often forget, or I sometimes vaguely remember today: you’re received into heaven. An assumption, in its modern sense, is really just a religious belief actually!

The Latin root assumptus itself comes from ad– (“up, to”) and sumere (“to take”) — so when you assume, you’re really “taking it up”!

The a-s-t of asunto maps clearly to the a-ss-(m)-t of assumption.

Cazar (Spanish for “to hunt”) and the English chase come from the same root: the Latin captiare, also meaning, “to hunt.” What is a chase if not just a calmed-down hunt?

You can see the c-z of cazar map to the ch-s of chase.

And it is perfectly appropriate that the English chase came to us via the French chasier. What are the French good for if not weakening the strong, manly hunt into the more feminine chase?