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A Reminder and Recap
I’ve been writing “Cognate Cognizance” for three and a half years now. Initially, I wrote it twice a week before settling into the weekly rhythm, so I’ve now written well over 200 entries, and I’ve gained subscribers along the way. Many of you were not with me when I started this project, so I thought I’d take today to reshare the first three word entries as well as the initial explanatory post to help remind everyone why I do this and what I hope you’ll take from it.
If you’d like to be able to listen to the audio of this post, please upgrade to paid status. With that, you’ll receive the weekly post as well as the audio version of it, and you’ll have full access to all those 200+ entries anytime you’d care to peruse them.
Here is what I wrote back on September 15, 2021:
The longer I taught Spanish (30 years in a classroom), the more similarities I saw between it and English via the wonderful thing called a cognate. A cognate is a word in one language that is similarly, or exactly, spelled like its counterpart in another language because the two words descend linguistically from the same word parent. It also has the same or a similar meaning in both languages. Usually, that word parent was born either in Greece or somewhere in the Roman empire, but he also could have started his life in Old English and been borrowed by Spanish. Word trees, like family trees, get pretty convoluted over the span of millennia.
Often, the common Spanish word has a lesser-known English cognate, or vice versa. By learning one side of a cognate duo, a person can strengthen her lexicon in two languages or even more if that person is, or wants to be, multilingual. Personally, my strengths are in English and Spanish, but I also know a little Italian, and I have the desire to know even more. I practice one or both foreign languages a little every day on my own now that I’m retired from teaching, and I get a special little jolt of joy when I stumble upon a cognate that helps me retain a word in Spanish or Italian or that helps me strengthen my own English vocabulary.
I will share the English word with its Spanish and/or Italian cognates. This publication isn’t meant to be an exhaustive account of all the English-Spanish/Italian cognates that exist. Rather, I want to point out instances where I had light-bulb moments in my own studies, common examples I showed my students for years, words that I feel will highly enhance your English vocabulary, and a lot of useful words that can work for you in either language. I may dabble in a few cognates from other languages besides Spanish and Italian, too, whenever those cognates have helped me to strengthen my English vocabulary.
I hope you will join me on this journey of word discovery through Cognate Cognizance!
On that same date, I wrote and shared the first cognate duo:
Here is that posting:
“Lave: a globally useful cognate for our current times”
lave — to wash or bathe (this verb exists and is occasionally used
in English; however, its Spanish and Italian counterparts are very often used)
lavar — this means “to wash” in Spanish
lavare — this means “to wash” in Italian
Conjugating (changing the infinitive, or base, form of the verb to agree with the subject) is a much more complex matter in Spanish and Italian, so all I’m sharing here are the infinitives. What’s interesting about this verb, though, is that lavar and lavare are the commonly used verbs in their respective languages, but in English, we tend to use the verb “to wash” instead of “to lave.” If you trace the word back to its linguistic roots, it comes both from Middle English, which isn’t connected to Latin, and from Old French, which is connected to Latin. So, it’s kind of an interesting word in that respect. It’s also been around in the English language for over a thousand years, but for some reason, we’ve basically stopped using it in preference for the word “wash” whose history goes further back into Old English.
However, the word “lave” does still exist. Teaching Spanish, when my students would learn the verb “lavar,” I would also introduce the word “lave” to them. They were usually pretty quick to point out that they’d never heard of it and that they’d never use it, most likely, but I would just as quickly point out that expanding their knowledge a tiny bit with a new English word (to them) wouldn’t hurt. I also would point out that there is a brand of soap called Lava, which most of them were familiar with, and while it wasn’t named Lava because of its association with the word “lave” or with the word “lavar,” but rather because of the pumice it contained and its association to volcanoes, a person could still use that soap as a mnemonic aid for “lave,” “lavar,” and “lavare.”
In our current global craze to keep everything sanitary, knowing to lave your hands in more than one language could prove useful.
On the following day, September 16, 2021, I wrote and shared this one:
“Infirm: something we all hate to be”
infirm — This word means “ill” or “sick and ailing.” It also has other meanings that have to do with being invalid and such, but the one that pertains to our cognate cognizance is the state of being ill.
enfermo/enferma — This is the Spanish word for “ill” or “sick and ailing.”
infermo/inferma — This is the Italian. Now, you can see that the Italian spelling is much more similar to the English spelling of the word since they both have that initial letter “i.” If you know some Spanish or Italian or the other languages that come from Latin, you already know that they use gender with their adjectives; thus, the two versions of each word. They also use number, so these words have plural variants, too, but I’m not going to get into that right now.
Since English speakers, at least those of us in the United States, tend to say we are “sick” or “ill” or “not feeling well” rather than saying we are “infirm,” this word could be a bit difficult for my Spanish language learners to retain. However, the word “infirmary” is actually well known even though it’s not used a lot anymore, so I would remind my students that an “infirmary” is a place where sick or “infirm” people go. Once that light-bulb moment occurred, the students would usually have an easier time recalling the word “enfermo” to use to indicate when someone was ill.
Knowing the word “enfermo” in Spanish can help you easily learn and recall the word “enfermero” or “enfermera” for a “nurse” or someone who cares for sick or “infirm” people. The word “infirmarian” does exist in English in reference to a person who nurses the sick, but it primarily is used in a religious house according to dictionary.com. However, according to Mirriam-Webster, it is used more in medical circles and simply means “a person having charge of an infirmary.” Knowing the word “infirm” also can then help you easily learn and recall the word “enfermedad” for an “illness” or an “infirmity.”
When you use cognates and place them in their word families, you can quickly build your vocabulary not only in a foreign language but also in your own. Infirm, infirmary, infirmarian, and infirmity may not be used a lot in English, but they exist, and they definitely come up in older literature. Knowing them then helps you quickly learn and retain enfermo/enferma, enfermería, enfermero/enfermera, and enfermidad in Spanish. In Italian, they are very similar: infermo/inferma, infermeria, infermiere/infermiera, and infermità.
All of these words, including our English counterparts, etymologically go back to the Latin word “infirmus” which basically means “not firm” in bodily or mental health. Other Romance languages, which spring from Latin, would have similar cognates for these words. My specialty is Spanish, and my sub-specialty due to a personal interest is Italian, so my focus will remain on those two languages, but if you are interested in French, Portuguese, Romanian, or even in studying Latin, you will find other examples of “infirm” cognates to build your vocabulary.
Here’s to hoping you, yourself, are not infirm right now! Have a great day.
And to finish out this stroll down cognate memory lane, here is the one I shared on September 20, 2021:
“Edifice: Building your vocabulary one word at a time”
edifice — simply put, an edifice is just a building. Usually, it is a larger building, but an edifice is just a building, nevertheless.
edificio — this is the Spanish cognate (and it’s the Italian one, too), and you can see that the two words are spelled the very same except at the ends of each. This is the common word for a building in Spanish, unlike in English where we tend to use the word “building” instead of “edifice” to refer to a construction that houses something.
Our English preferred use of “building” simply goes back to the roots of our language when the ancestor to the word “building” was born during Middle English time, whereas “edifice” descends from Latin, as does the Spanish language which uses and prefers the word “edificio.”
When I was teaching Spanish for thirty years, this was one of the most common cognates I used to also build up, or edify, my students’ English vocabulary. Most of them had never heard the word “edifice” until I told them it was the English cognate for “edificio” and that it would be easier to remember the word “edificio” if they also just remembered the word “edifice” since they are so similar. It is much easier than trying to equate the words “building” and “edificio” in your head where there isn’t anything really to tie them together.
Once you have “edifice” firmly lodged in your brain, it’s then easy to add and make connections for “edify” which has largely lost its meaning of “to build” over time but which still essentially means that you build up someone by educating them about something — much as I’m trying to do for you through this newsletter. I’m trying to edify your vocabulary. In Spanish, the cognate is “edificar” while in Italian it is “edificare.”
Unless you are reading this outdoors somewhere, you are most likely sitting in some sort of edifice right now. If it happens to be a large and imposing building, then mentally lock it in your mind as the image for “edifice.” It’s easier to recall words if we associate them with something meaningful to us. If it’s not a memorable edifice, then picture one that is, like the Empire State Building or, better yet, the high school building you attended.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cognatecognizance.substack.com/subscribe
Please share this with anybody else that you think might be interested in becoming a subscriber to “Cognate Cognizance.” Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you’ll consider becoming a paying subscriber. Until next time.
Tammy Marshall
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cognatecognizance.substack.com/subscribe
View all episodes
By Tammy MarshallI’ve been writing “Cognate Cognizance” for three and a half years now. Initially, I wrote it twice a week before settling into the weekly rhythm, so I’ve now written well over 200 entries, and I’ve gained subscribers along the way. Many of you were not with me when I started this project, so I thought I’d take today to reshare the first three word entries as well as the initial explanatory post to help remind everyone why I do this and what I hope you’ll take from it.
If you’d like to be able to listen to the audio of this post, please upgrade to paid status. With that, you’ll receive the weekly post as well as the audio version of it, and you’ll have full access to all those 200+ entries anytime you’d care to peruse them.
Here is what I wrote back on September 15, 2021:
The longer I taught Spanish (30 years in a classroom), the more similarities I saw between it and English via the wonderful thing called a cognate. A cognate is a word in one language that is similarly, or exactly, spelled like its counterpart in another language because the two words descend linguistically from the same word parent. It also has the same or a similar meaning in both languages. Usually, that word parent was born either in Greece or somewhere in the Roman empire, but he also could have started his life in Old English and been borrowed by Spanish. Word trees, like family trees, get pretty convoluted over the span of millennia.
Often, the common Spanish word has a lesser-known English cognate, or vice versa. By learning one side of a cognate duo, a person can strengthen her lexicon in two languages or even more if that person is, or wants to be, multilingual. Personally, my strengths are in English and Spanish, but I also know a little Italian, and I have the desire to know even more. I practice one or both foreign languages a little every day on my own now that I’m retired from teaching, and I get a special little jolt of joy when I stumble upon a cognate that helps me retain a word in Spanish or Italian or that helps me strengthen my own English vocabulary.
I will share the English word with its Spanish and/or Italian cognates. This publication isn’t meant to be an exhaustive account of all the English-Spanish/Italian cognates that exist. Rather, I want to point out instances where I had light-bulb moments in my own studies, common examples I showed my students for years, words that I feel will highly enhance your English vocabulary, and a lot of useful words that can work for you in either language. I may dabble in a few cognates from other languages besides Spanish and Italian, too, whenever those cognates have helped me to strengthen my English vocabulary.
I hope you will join me on this journey of word discovery through Cognate Cognizance!
On that same date, I wrote and shared the first cognate duo:
Here is that posting:
“Lave: a globally useful cognate for our current times”
lave — to wash or bathe (this verb exists and is occasionally used
in English; however, its Spanish and Italian counterparts are very often used)
lavar — this means “to wash” in Spanish
lavare — this means “to wash” in Italian
Conjugating (changing the infinitive, or base, form of the verb to agree with the subject) is a much more complex matter in Spanish and Italian, so all I’m sharing here are the infinitives. What’s interesting about this verb, though, is that lavar and lavare are the commonly used verbs in their respective languages, but in English, we tend to use the verb “to wash” instead of “to lave.” If you trace the word back to its linguistic roots, it comes both from Middle English, which isn’t connected to Latin, and from Old French, which is connected to Latin. So, it’s kind of an interesting word in that respect. It’s also been around in the English language for over a thousand years, but for some reason, we’ve basically stopped using it in preference for the word “wash” whose history goes further back into Old English.
However, the word “lave” does still exist. Teaching Spanish, when my students would learn the verb “lavar,” I would also introduce the word “lave” to them. They were usually pretty quick to point out that they’d never heard of it and that they’d never use it, most likely, but I would just as quickly point out that expanding their knowledge a tiny bit with a new English word (to them) wouldn’t hurt. I also would point out that there is a brand of soap called Lava, which most of them were familiar with, and while it wasn’t named Lava because of its association with the word “lave” or with the word “lavar,” but rather because of the pumice it contained and its association to volcanoes, a person could still use that soap as a mnemonic aid for “lave,” “lavar,” and “lavare.”
In our current global craze to keep everything sanitary, knowing to lave your hands in more than one language could prove useful.
On the following day, September 16, 2021, I wrote and shared this one:
“Infirm: something we all hate to be”
infirm — This word means “ill” or “sick and ailing.” It also has other meanings that have to do with being invalid and such, but the one that pertains to our cognate cognizance is the state of being ill.
enfermo/enferma — This is the Spanish word for “ill” or “sick and ailing.”
infermo/inferma — This is the Italian. Now, you can see that the Italian spelling is much more similar to the English spelling of the word since they both have that initial letter “i.” If you know some Spanish or Italian or the other languages that come from Latin, you already know that they use gender with their adjectives; thus, the two versions of each word. They also use number, so these words have plural variants, too, but I’m not going to get into that right now.
Since English speakers, at least those of us in the United States, tend to say we are “sick” or “ill” or “not feeling well” rather than saying we are “infirm,” this word could be a bit difficult for my Spanish language learners to retain. However, the word “infirmary” is actually well known even though it’s not used a lot anymore, so I would remind my students that an “infirmary” is a place where sick or “infirm” people go. Once that light-bulb moment occurred, the students would usually have an easier time recalling the word “enfermo” to use to indicate when someone was ill.
Knowing the word “enfermo” in Spanish can help you easily learn and recall the word “enfermero” or “enfermera” for a “nurse” or someone who cares for sick or “infirm” people. The word “infirmarian” does exist in English in reference to a person who nurses the sick, but it primarily is used in a religious house according to dictionary.com. However, according to Mirriam-Webster, it is used more in medical circles and simply means “a person having charge of an infirmary.” Knowing the word “infirm” also can then help you easily learn and recall the word “enfermedad” for an “illness” or an “infirmity.”
When you use cognates and place them in their word families, you can quickly build your vocabulary not only in a foreign language but also in your own. Infirm, infirmary, infirmarian, and infirmity may not be used a lot in English, but they exist, and they definitely come up in older literature. Knowing them then helps you quickly learn and retain enfermo/enferma, enfermería, enfermero/enfermera, and enfermidad in Spanish. In Italian, they are very similar: infermo/inferma, infermeria, infermiere/infermiera, and infermità.
All of these words, including our English counterparts, etymologically go back to the Latin word “infirmus” which basically means “not firm” in bodily or mental health. Other Romance languages, which spring from Latin, would have similar cognates for these words. My specialty is Spanish, and my sub-specialty due to a personal interest is Italian, so my focus will remain on those two languages, but if you are interested in French, Portuguese, Romanian, or even in studying Latin, you will find other examples of “infirm” cognates to build your vocabulary.
Here’s to hoping you, yourself, are not infirm right now! Have a great day.
And to finish out this stroll down cognate memory lane, here is the one I shared on September 20, 2021:
“Edifice: Building your vocabulary one word at a time”
edifice — simply put, an edifice is just a building. Usually, it is a larger building, but an edifice is just a building, nevertheless.
edificio — this is the Spanish cognate (and it’s the Italian one, too), and you can see that the two words are spelled the very same except at the ends of each. This is the common word for a building in Spanish, unlike in English where we tend to use the word “building” instead of “edifice” to refer to a construction that houses something.
Our English preferred use of “building” simply goes back to the roots of our language when the ancestor to the word “building” was born during Middle English time, whereas “edifice” descends from Latin, as does the Spanish language which uses and prefers the word “edificio.”
When I was teaching Spanish for thirty years, this was one of the most common cognates I used to also build up, or edify, my students’ English vocabulary. Most of them had never heard the word “edifice” until I told them it was the English cognate for “edificio” and that it would be easier to remember the word “edificio” if they also just remembered the word “edifice” since they are so similar. It is much easier than trying to equate the words “building” and “edificio” in your head where there isn’t anything really to tie them together.
Once you have “edifice” firmly lodged in your brain, it’s then easy to add and make connections for “edify” which has largely lost its meaning of “to build” over time but which still essentially means that you build up someone by educating them about something — much as I’m trying to do for you through this newsletter. I’m trying to edify your vocabulary. In Spanish, the cognate is “edificar” while in Italian it is “edificare.”
Unless you are reading this outdoors somewhere, you are most likely sitting in some sort of edifice right now. If it happens to be a large and imposing building, then mentally lock it in your mind as the image for “edifice.” It’s easier to recall words if we associate them with something meaningful to us. If it’s not a memorable edifice, then picture one that is, like the Empire State Building or, better yet, the high school building you attended.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cognatecognizance.substack.com/subscribe
Please share this with anybody else that you think might be interested in becoming a subscriber to “Cognate Cognizance.” Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you’ll consider becoming a paying subscriber. Until next time.
Tammy Marshall
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cognatecognizance.substack.com/subscribe