6 Alien-Sounding Spanish Verbs In An Instant

Etymology is an incredibly wonderful tool when it comes to acquiring new words. Dig deep enough into the history of any language and words that seemed utterly alien and unrelated until now suddenly start to appear familiar. This works best when the language in question shares genetics with your native tongue. Fortunately, Spanish and English share a stronger ancestral bond than many acknowledge, which makes learning new words easier than it seems. Let’s see how etymological mapping can help us learn some of the most commonly used Spanish verbs that, on face value, seem to have little semblance with their English meanings.

Drinking in Spanish

Tomar is preferred over beber in most of Latin America
Photo credit: grahamc99 licensed CC BY 2.0

The English verb, “drink,” translates into Spanish as beber. Now, the two words hardly seem to have any similarity whatsoever, do they? Turns out they do! Just scratch through the surface and it won’t take you too long to realize that beber actually comes from a source that gave English a good part of its vocabulary. Well, they don’t have a direct connection but traces of their common history still exist in both languages and that’s enough for our purposes.

So, what’s the connection? Actually, beber of Spanish is a direct descendant of bibere in Latin. Now, while bibere doesn’t have anything to do with “drink,” it did give English a word rather unfamiliar to most of us, “bever.” This is an archaic word from Old English that meant “to drink.” Still doesn’t ring a bell? Now, think about this – Where do you think the word, “beverage” comes from? So, a “beverage” is something to “bever” (i.e., drink) in roughly the same way as a wreckage is something that’s been wrecked. What do you think of beber now? It should be easy to remember now. Just think “beverage” when you hear beber and etymology should take care of the rest.

By the way, in most Latin American cultures, the preferred word for drinking is tomar (to take). Though tomar doesn’t directly mean “to drink” but it’s used in the same fashion as we English-speakers often use “have” or “take” when we actually mean “to drink” or “to eat.”

Eating in Spanish

Both comer and its English translation share a common latin origin!
Photo credit: Kumar McMillan licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

This one is a tad more complicated that beber. But etymological connection still does exist despite having been twisted beyond recognition over time. The Spanish translation is comer, which looks and sounds anything but similar to the English verb. So where’s the connection?

History again. Comer comes from, you guessed it right, Latin. The Latin verb is comedō which is actually two words rolled into one – com and edō. The first word, com, is an intensifier that means “with,” and the second word, edō means, “I eat.” So, all in all, the whole shebang actually just stands for an intensified eating action, more akin to eating up, or devouring. Now, for some reasons, while the edō bit morphed into English as “eat” without the intensifier, the word as a whole morphed into the comer of Spanish. Twisted, yes, but the correlation is strong enough nonetheless.

The Spanish for believe

The verb in Spanish is creer which, again, bears hardly any semblance to the English, “believe.” But a little bit of lateral thinking and historical research would tell you that creer actually comes from the Latin word, crēdere, which meant the same thing. By now, you should have easily guessed that this crēdere somehow went on to morph into several English words having something to do with believing, such as “credible” (believable). See how the pieces suddenly add up and creer becomes familiar? In fact, even the English word, “credit,” has the same history. When someone lends you any money on credit, they actually believe in your intention to return the loan when you are able to, hence the term. And there’s a whole bunch of words in both English and Spanish, all of them sharing the same origin.

Speaking of credit, it’s a good idea to learn the Spanish for lending, isn’t it? The word is prestar and is one of the top 100 most useful verbs in this language. Now, prestar is a direct descendant of the Latin verb, praestāre, which carried a range of meanings, one of which is, “to present,” or “to provide.” Now you know where the English verb, “to present,” comes from. Even though the meanings have slightly diverged when the Latin root went down the two separate paths of Spanish and English, they are not too different after all. Lending is, in a vague way, presenting!

Some simple business in Spanish

Both comprar and vender have Latin roots relating them with their English meanings
Photo credit: Nadia & Massimo licensed CC BY 2.0

What is business if not buying and selling? Let’s start with buying. Long, long ago, there used to be a Latin word, comparāre, which was a portmanteau of com (with) and parāre (prepare). Essentially, this Latin root meant, “to make equal with,” or “to bring something together for choosing.” With time, this evolved into “compare” of English keeping the original meaning more-or-less intact. However, there was also another evolution at work at the same time, where it turned into the comprar of Spanish. In this case, the original meaning was kind of lost but the connotation retained to a degree. Comprar is the Spanish for buying. Think about it, what do you essentially do while buying? You basically “equate” the item with money; you take the thing you intend to buy and, in turn, pay the vendor an “equivalent” amount of money to complete the transaction. In a vague sense, this is what the original Latin verb stood for!

As for selling, it’s quite simple. Who’s a seller? A vendor. And who’s a vendor? Someone who sells, or vends, his wares. So, you’re familiar with this verb, “to vend”? If yes, you already know its Spanish – vender. Again, thank their common Latin ancestry for things being so easy and straightforward.

Well, these are just 6 of the 100 most important verbs in the Spanish language. And if you think you can comfortably remember and recall these six after reading this article, you can be reasonably sure you’ll find the remaining just as easy. There’s hardly any Spanish word you can’t nail this way. A little bit of research into the word’s history is all you need to see a recognizable pattern. This trick is certainly way more effective and less taxing than mindlessly cramming them up off a dictionary. Try it, your brain will thank you for it!

Why not take it a notch further and do some similar research of your own? Pick up any Spanish word you have found exceptionally difficult to remember and see if applying this method makes it a breeze. If it does, share it with the rest of us by dropping in a comment here and let them learn out of your creativity!