Ladrones: A New Type of Reading Material

Let’s suppose…

Let’s suppose that you know someone is doing secret work for the government.

In fact, someone is carrying on an ‘ultra-secret’ investigation for the military, trying to track information in an espionage case. So, what do you do?

When someone drops by to talk to a person who happens to be gone at the moment—the same person you know is gone because he’s doing an espionage investigation? Obviously, you say, “Sorry, Dad’s not here—he’s working on an ultra-secret case for the Navy.”

Okay, maybe not?

Unfortunately, I happened to start reading another book not long ago … Los Hardy Boys: El Espía del Pentágono.

Okay, let me explain.

I wanted to work on reading out loud occasionally, but Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages wasn’t working. Then, of course, I haven’t done much Spanish practice in recent weeks. Since I love combining two needs, I decided the occasion called for me to read something in Spanish…and the book I happened to have around was a Hardy Boys’ story in Spanish.

So, it wasn’t a top-secret case; it was un asunto ultrasecreto—and yes, the Hardy Boys went and blurted that fact out to their visitor within two minutes of meeting him. I used to think only Chet would do something like that.

Even better, I’ve also found that the book is about to mix genres in a small way. The Hardys are heading off into Amish country to investigate weathervanes.

Of course, reading the first chapter, I had to guess that valetas are weather vanes. Turns out that my guess was correct. That just as well. Otherwise, I might have needed to make up my own story about the Hardy boys rescuing antique weathervanes from a band of ladrones, chasing them down horse-and-buggy style.

That story might have gotten a little mixed-up, though. Right now, I’ve swapped to listening to Anne of Green Gables via a Librivox recording. 

I must be reliving my childhood.

Finding the Family Tree

A cognate—according to Encarta—means a thing that is related to or has the same parentage as another. It derives from a Latin word which means “born together.” In the linguistic world, therefore, Cognate is a descendent of Cognatus as well as a possible parent or brother to Cognada in Spanish.

Today I went to my last Spanish class of the year, which means I’m once again thinking of words, their roots, and their meanings…

If you are working on la computadora, for example, is it more fun to use the mouse and pulsar or else hacer click en el ratón, “to make a click on the mouse”? If, unhappily, someone has not learned to read, is it better to say that person is illiterate or that he is analfebeto, without the alphabet? And, how is the Spanish embotellamiento, or bottling up, related to or derived from the English “traffic jam” or “bottleneck”?

As an English speaker, I find it relatively easy to use the familiar cognate, the word that looks like someone you’ve already met. If you can find the remote—or at least remember its name—then it’s not too hard to guess that el remoto controls the TV set. Still, who stops to consider that el mando a distancia performs the same function by sending or commanding the TV at a distance?

Words are lovely things, when you stop to think about them. It's rather like listening to children learning how to speak—we get to hear the old things in a new way.

One of my long-held favorites is, in fact, that thing which others curse…being put on hold. No one wants to be held off—but what if, instead, you are asked “to be in hope,” estar en espera?

And, of course, there is always the Spanish word for an engagement or una compromiso matrimonial. My first thought was to match this word with a compromise or lowering of morals, not the proper ideal for a marriage at all. However, a marriage does at times require compromises or mutual concession, so perhaps the word is fitting. Even more appropriately, a marriage is a promise which a man and a woman make con, or with, each other.

(In the tangled family of words, it may be tricky to guess which language borrowed from another, but at least I can figure out my own family easily enough. Cognates, also according to Encarta, include anyone having the same ancestry, anyone related by blood. So, I rest assured that my siblings are among my many cognates.)

La Abeja Reina



And "Tortuga," the turtle

Queen bee,
Chimpanzee,
Goldfish
And gorillas…

I’ve mentioned before that I like languages. More recently, I mentioned taking a Spanish class this fall. I had to drop out of the class this spring, due to a scheduling conflict, but I’ve still been studying Spanish at irregular intervals. That is to say, today I was typing vocabulary lists into a spreadsheet. Long, long lists about “la familia y los amigos” and “el reino de los animales.”

Since I like words, and I like playing with words—and I like playing with the history of words as well—I started trying to decipher the linguistic peculiarities of these vocabulary words:

Who, for example, came up with “la mariposa?” Yes, I’ve heard the word before, but I never knew its translation. To my ears, it sounds somehow more “butterfly-like” than the English word, and “la libélula” sounds far more onomatopoetic and gorgeous than plain, old “dragonfly.”

I can’t explain how those words came into being, but a few others sound more familiar—“la foca” I recognize because I know its Latin root “phoca” or “seal”…thanks to reading Sir Walter Scott’s The Antiquarian several years ago. “La mosca,” which rhymes, reminds me of its French linguistic cousin, “le mouche” or “fly.” And who needs much translation for our friends “el elefante,” “la jirafa,” or “el hámster?”

"Hippo," el hipopótamo

I can also guess how, in the world of compound names, we happened to be introduced to two other old friends—hook-foot and mountain-jumper (“la garrapata” and “la saltamontes”). In English, we know them as ticks and grasshoppers.

But can someone explain how the “r” in “crocodile” jumped several letters back to become “el cocodrile?” Or why “o” became “e” to make “dolphin” into “el delfín?”

And can “el escarabajo,” the beetle, possible have a connection to “scarab?”

Sometimes, of course, the word’s origins are much more obvious—for example, when you want to explain why “mosquito” resembles “el mosquito.”

Yes, I like words, and the history of words, and all the extraneous explanations for how they got here and where they are going. Sometimes they seem simply anomalous; sometimes you can tell exactly how cupboards and bookshelves and grasshoppers came to be called by their names. And at other times, we seem to have chased and pulled them across continents in our hurry-and-scurry lives. In other words…

"León," the lion

…leónes, y tigres y osos—oh my!