Hello, Reader!

I hope your language learning has gone well this week.

I've been writing these emails for a number of years now, and it's one part of my work that I really enjoy. Some of you have been on the list for a very long time, and others have only joined in the last week or two. Wherever you sit on that scale, I hope that you find these weekly emails interesting and useful!

I tend to write about language learning itself, about interesting things I've read about languages and linguistics, and about what's going on here at Coffee Break. As well as these Friday emails, we send out lessons in Spanish, French, Italian, German and English on Mondays, so if you're not already receiving those, you can update your preferences here.

Every so often I get a reply from someone who isn't interested in a particular language, because they'd rather put all of their attention into the one they're learning. If I've been writing about Norwegian, for example, that's perhaps not much use to someone who's learning Italian. I totally understand that. But most of the time the email isn't really about Norwegian, or whatever language I've been writing about. It's about the process of learning, and the tips and tricks that any learner can pick up and use.

And there's something else, too. I think that being open to the languages you're not learning can actually help with the one you are.

To avoid this email being too long, I'm going to try to convince you of this with three "theories" over this week and next week's emails.

Theory #1: The language you're learning already has other languages hiding inside it.

Sometimes there's a lot more crossover between languages than you first think.

My favourite example here is Spanish. In the 8th century, Arabic-speaking armies crossed from North Africa into the Iberian peninsula, and for the next few hundred years much of what we now call Spain was Al-Andalus, with Córdoba becoming one of the largest cities in Europe. Arabic was the language of government, trade and science there.

What this left behind in Spanish isn't a scattering of odd words. It's whole subject areas. From farming: aceituna ("olive"), arroz ("rice"), azúcar ("sugar"). From the house, almohada ("pillow"), alfombra ("carpet"), azulejo ("tile"). From running a town, alcalde ("mayor"), aduana ("customs").

Once you know that the Arabic al- is just the word for "the" (and that it sometimes shows up as just a-), the whole group of words stops feeling random and becomes a set of words - and that makes it easier to remember. There's also the very common word ojalá, which means "hopefully" or "let's hope so", and it comes from an Arabic phrase meaning "if God wills it".

You don't need to learn the Arabic words, but a little curiosity can help a chunk of your Spanish vocabulary stop feeling like hard work.

The same goes for French words in Swedish (paraply means "umbrella", like parapluie). And while the Latin word for "white" was albus, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese all dropped it in favour of the Germanic word blank meaning "shining" or "gleaming".

There are also eureka moments waiting just round the corner when you realise that certain patterns cross between languages. For example, the Germanic W often became GU in Romance languages, which is why William and Guillaume are the same name. But did you realise that an English "warranty" and a French garantie are actually the same word? And that warden, guardian, ward and guard are all related?

Sometimes the help is more practical than historical. If you're learning Spanish and you've done some French or Italian, there's a conversion trick worth knowing. At some point Spanish turned the Latin F at the start of a word into an H, and then stopped pronouncing the H altogether. Latin facere gives French faire and Italian fare, but Spanish hacer. Filius ("son") gives fils and figlio, but hijo. "Flour" is farine and farina, but harina in Spanish. Once you've spotted the pattern, you can guess your way through a surprising amount of vocabulary (but be careful, because it doesn't work every time!)

OK, so much for theory #1. I'll share theories #2 and #3 next week, and I hope by then I'll have convinced you that learning about other languages can be hugely beneficial to you for the language you're working on.

For now, thanks for reading and I wish you a lovely weekend.

Happy Coffee Breaking!

Mark