To give a personal anecdote, I had a trip to Costa Rica on the horizon and needed to brush up on my Spanish. Luckily I had a few years of high school Spanish under my belt, so it was mainly a matter of getting comfortable with the basics again. But as I was relearning, I realized that there were many more connections between words than I realized. Instead of trying to remember everything through sheer brute force, I could take \u201cshortcuts\u201d if I only took note of how all these seemingly different words were related.Given that Costa Rica is known for its volcanoes and mountains, let\u2019s use geological terms as examples. Naturally, we should start with the term <\/span>geology <\/span><\/i>itself. It can be broken down into two parts, <\/span>geo <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>ology<\/span><\/i>, as seen in figure one. The first part comes from the Greek word for <\/span>Earth<\/span><\/i>, and the second, also from Greek, means <\/span>study of<\/span><\/i>. Therefore, we can understand that <\/span>geology <\/span><\/i>means <\/span>study of the Earth<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A more complicated example would be the etymology for <\/span>volcano<\/span><\/i>. Volcanoes were named after the island Vulcano, a small island near Italy that contains three volcanic calderas. In turn, this island was named after the Roman god of fire and metalworking, Vulcan. Its smoking calderas were thought to be the chimneys of Vulcan\u2019s workshop.<\/span>Volcano<\/span><\/i>\u2019s origin becomes more of an exercise in geography and history knowledge. However, this can still be helpful information to have, such as with trying to figure out what vulcanizing rubber means. Using the connections from <\/span>volcano<\/span><\/i> and the mythological figure Vulcan, we can accurately guess that vulcanizing rubber involves a high level of heat. Of course this is not the full definition, as vulcanization is a complex process that involves various chemicals like sulfur to change the rubber at the molecular level. But understanding the origin of the word allows us to better understand how words, even in different languages, are connected.<\/span><\/p>\n The goal is not to know exactly how languages evolved and diverged to create the words we have today, but rather to use what we do know to learn and understand new words efficiently. A good trick is to think of words with similar meaning, but vastly different spellings and\/or pronunciations. For example the Spanish word <\/span>pollo <\/span><\/i>has little in common with its English translation of <\/span>chicken<\/span><\/i>. However, if we think of the word <\/span>poultry<\/span><\/i>, we can see the connection.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The underlying reason is because Spanish is primarily derived from Latin, while English is derived from old Germanic languages with a smaller Latin influence. Therefore English words will sound and look closer to German, but there are likely some English words that can help us remember the Spanish equivalent. Refer to figure 1 to see how this works with <\/span>pollo <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>poultry<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Another word like this is <\/span>caballo<\/span><\/i>, derived from the Latin <\/span>caballus<\/span><\/i>. This translates to horse<\/span> in English, which due to its Germanic roots, is quite unlike the Spanish word. In this case, we can think of <\/span>cavalry<\/span><\/i>, referring to soldiers on horseback, to help us. Though the <\/span>v <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>b<\/span><\/i> may be different, small differences between similar sounds can be overlooked. After all, creating Spanish from Latin took hundreds of years, which gives plenty of time for spelling and pronunciation to slightly drift.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"A](\"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/talk-science-to-me\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/955\/2023\/05\/Screen-Shot-2023-03-10-at-11.55.06-PM-300x206.jpeg\")
![\"An](\"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/talk-science-to-me\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/955\/2023\/05\/image0-7-e1683332835236-300x260.jpeg\")