Quite simple learning, some irony and latin confusions.

When I was a young man I started to read and speak English. That was some one-hundred years ago.You know the Jurassic age? I was a young man in just the next era, believe me.

Sometimes I like saying that I learned English like children do. Word by word. From the very basic. No study but much practice. And I had a secret that I'd like to share with my nice classmates. The secret was never being 'shy' and never hesitating. Use the English you know. English/Americans natives will always (99.9%) welcome your English even if it is basic and wrong (I guess like English children's is).

I already wrote a note on Felicity’s blog about the topic of the English language origin versus Germanic and Romance languages. The document our teacher handed over is very very interesting. To me it’s even more than interesting it is fascinating. When reading that text I remembered a confusion in translation that may be made by student beginners.

In fact the point is that current Romance languages like French, Italian, Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish (Castilian) all come from relatively straight forward Latin. Therefore a substantial number of ‘our’ words are relatively similar in their writing or speaking to Latin English words. For instance, auxiliary (auxiliar), impression (impresión), ubiquitous (ubicuo), etc.

But every word is not that much easy. When Spanish people (the same as Italians, etc.) come across a Latin English word tend to believe that its meaning is the same as their own similar word. This is the case for many words. But there are many as well that changed their meaning with time passing.

What happens is that once a language is born its words start to evolve (a bit according to Darwin’s laws) and their meaning and spelling lose connection with their origins.

To explain the above let me make a hypothetical example. Let’s take the Latin adjective ‘minusculus’ (small, tiny). Suppose that at certain time (XIth. century I think) its use was introduced in England as part of the Latin used at that time. After several centuries the word was eventually part of modern English as ‘minuscule’ (the meaning kept unchanged: small, tiny).

Latin ‘minusculus’ survived also in some Mediterranean countries. Nowadays this word do exist in French (minuscule), Italian (minuscolo), Spanish (minúsculo), Catalan (minúscul), and probably in other Romance languages. But suppose now (it is not true) that in some or all of these countries the meaning changed with time. Suppose (it is not true) that ‘minúsculo’ in Spanish currently means ‘weak’. If this was the case a low experienced Spanish student of English could understand as ‘weak’ when facing English ‘minuscule’.

To end up with a more practical information I’m writing five cases that fit into my previous comment. In my opinion these are words commonly and continuously being used in English but I would say that beginners easily fall into the trap once produced by the long-lived Latin-English-Spanish-shake.

English...............Translation by ‘intuition’................Right translation


Actually..........................Actualmente............................................En realidad, realmente

Eventually.....................Eventualmente.........................................Al final, finalmente

Consistently.................Consistentemente...................................Coherentemente, consecuentemente

Comprehensive..........Comprensivo...........................................Global, de conjunto, exhaustivo

Current.........................Corriente..................................................Actual


I’m sorry my friends. I can’t help being long and tedious when writing (not to mention when talking!).
See you on Thursday!

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