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The Spanish hiding in English

Pick an English word and watch the Latin word behind it turn into Spanish, one change at a time. The highlighted letters are the ones that just changed.

  1. Englishfact
  2. Latinfactum
  3. factoendings wore down
  4. fechoct → ch
  5. Spanishhechof → h
  6. hecho means “done; a fact”

Same word, two routes

English took words like fact, nocturnal and ferrous from Latin in writing, mostly through French and scholarship, so they kept their Latin shape. Spanish inherited the everyday Latin words underneath them, factum, noctem and ferrum, passed from speaker to speaker for well over a thousand years, and in speech words wear down in regular ways. So factum became fact in English and hecho in Spanish: the same word, taken by two different routes.

A dozen changes do most of the work

The changes weren't random. A sound that changed in one word changed in nearly every word where it stood in the same place, which is why the same few patterns keep turning up. Pick one to see every word here it acted on.

At the start of a word, f became h, which has since gone silent. Not before ue or r: fuego, frío.
7 words here went through it
  • factfechohechohecho “done; a fact”
  • filialfijohijohijo “son”
  • ferrousfierrohierrohierro “iron”
  • femininefembrahembrahembra “female”
  • fablefablarhablarhablar “to speak”
  • foliagefojahojahoja “leaf”
  • fumefumohumohumo “smoke”

Try one yourself

Once you know the changes, you can run them yourself. Here's an English word, its Latin and the changes it went through. What did it become?

lactoseLatin lacte
Changes it went through: ct → ch
What did it become in Spanish?

Using it when you read

How it works

The English word shares the Latin root. Sometimes it's the very same word (factum, fact), more often one built on it: nocturnal is from nocturnalis, built on noctem, and novel from novellus, built on novum. Each word starts from the Latin form Spanish grew from: usually the one used as an object (noctem, not nox), and sometimes the everyday spoken form (lacte, scola). The steps between are simplified. Some were written down (fecho, fijo, fierro and fablar are all Old Spanish), others are shorthand for changes that took centuries, and the order is the usual one, not a date. The changes also have exceptions: before ct and li a stressed e or o didn't break, which is why it's noche and hoja, not nueche and hueja. Only words that follow the changes are included (Penny, 2002).

Questions

Why does Spanish have h where English has f?

Because Spanish turned the f at the start of a Latin word into an h, which was once breathed and is now silent: filium became hijo, ferrum became hierro, fumum became humo. English borrowed words built on the same Latin roots, f and all: filial, ferrous and fume. The change didn't happen before ue or r, which is why Spanish still has fuego, fuerte and frío.

Why do so many Spanish words have ie and ue?

A stressed short e in Latin broke into ie in Spanish, and a stressed short o into ue: terra became tierra, porta became puerta. That's also why some Spanish verbs change their stem when the stress falls on it: poder but puedo, sentir but siento.

Is every Spanish h an old f?

No. Some come straight from a Latin h, as in hora and humano, and some were added in spelling, as in huevo (from ovum). An h followed by a vowel is still a good thing to try as an f: hacer is related to fact, harina to farina, hoja to foliage.

Sources

  1. A History of the Spanish Language, 2nd edition. Ralph Penny, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  2. Spanish etymologies. Wiktionary.

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