Sala, the common Spanish word meaning “room,” comes from the same root as two very similar English words: salon and saloon. All come from the old German sal meaning “hall” or “house” and thus it’s an interesting example of how words degrade over time: something big and grand like a hall or a house is now just your little back room.

The s-l root is clearly visible in all variations.

The Spanish delante (“in front of”) comes from the Latin de– (“of, out of”) and ante (“before”), via intante (in plus ante). So “in front of” is literally “before” in the sense of “standing before.”

Thus, with the de– prefix, it is a cousin of the ante that brings us a host of English words with ante that mean “before”: anterior, antediluvian, antique. We can see the a-n-t root in all these variations.

The Spanish madero, for “wood”, sounds random, doesn’t it?

But it is more obvious than it sounds: it comes from the Latin root materia, which means “the substance from which something is made; inner wood of a tree.”

From this Latin word materia, we get the English words material and matter. At least metaphysically, they are what stuff is made of, aren’t they?

The Spanish sentir (“to feel”) doesn’t bear an obvious relation to the same English word. But looks can be deceiving:

Sentir comes from the Latin for the same, sentire, which in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *sent, meaning, “to go” — feelings are thus, definitionally, fleeting, things that come and go.

From the Latin sentire, we get a bunch of similar words in English, including:

• Sentence — which originally meant, “a thought, judgment, opinion.” A sentence is a judgment indeed!
• Sense — which is a feeling!
• Resent — these are just your feelings, magnified with a re!
• Scent — to smell something is to have a feeling for it, too!

And a few others, including assent, consent, dissent and, most obviously, sentiment.

From the original Proto-Indo-European root *sent, meaning “to go” — via German, that turned into some simpler English words that we can now consider distant cousins of Sentir: send. Feelings do come and go!

Cama, Spanish for “bed”, has many surprising cousins in English, including:

• Chamber — This French word made its way into English, meaning originally and still most commonly, “bedroom”. What is your bedroom if not the room with your bed? Chamber comes from the Latin, camera, meaning the same — from which we also get cama itself.
• Camera — From Latin for the same word, room. If we think about how a camera works: there is a little dark room where the film is exposed.
• Comrade — The communist word for “friend” came to Russian and the world via French, but came to French via the Spanish camarada, literally, “chamber mate” — the person you shared your room with. You and your comrades have a closer relationship than you thought!

In all these words, we can see a c(h)-m to c-m mapping, so the relationships are clear!

Torcer, Spanish for “to twist”, as well as retorcer (meaning the same) both come from the Latin root torquere.

From the Latin torquere, we also get the English… torture. You can see the t-r-k sound mapping to the English t-r-t, since the “k” sounds are very similar to the “t” sounds.

Torture, after all, is just an extreme form of being twisted: mentally, physically, and in all ways.

From the same root, we also get the English… to thwart. Funnily enough, to thwart is–in a sense–the exact opposite of torture.

Frenar (Spanish for, “to break”, particularly in the sense of, “to stop” — think of, the breaks on your car!) comes from the Latin frenare, meaning, “to restrain,” which itself is from the old Latin frenum for “birdle” — yes, the mouthpiece you put on a horse to, umm, restrain it.

From that same root, we get the English refrain. It is the same frenare root, with the re– added for emphasis. But we have the -ain spelling because it comes into English via French, with the refraigner, of course. We can see the f-r-n maps to the (re)-f-r-n very clearly as well.

The lesson here is: from restraining someone from doing something (the old sense of the word) to refraining completely from doing it (the new sense of the word) is just a minor step. At least linguistically.

Sport and the Spanish for the same, deporte, are closer than they seem.

The English sport comes from the French for the same… desporte — notice it is the same as the Spanish, except with an extra “s” (that’s a pattern that we’ll explain in the French version of this page one day!).

You can see the connection to the English clearly if we remember the “s” and we remember the de- prefix was lost over time. Thus, the s-p-r-t maps to the Spanish (d)-(s)-p-r-t.

The French desporte (and thus the English sport) and its Spanish equivalent deporte both come from the same Latin root: des- meaning “away” and portare, meaning, “to carry”.

Thus deporte, and sport, is also related to puerto (“port”) and portero (“super”, in the sense of, “superintendent”) in Spanish and port in English.