Yong Huang's Blog: Learning Spanish, French, and Italian Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics

Test of AI's to suggest mnemonics

Ever since ChatGPT became available in late 2022, creating a mnemonic is no longer exclusively a human effort. Tricks people have been using for centuries still work. But when no good mnemonic comes out of our brain, we now have one more tool to try and check.

The French word arnaque means "scam" or "rip-off". Other than by rote memory (with flash cards, e.g.), there's no good way to remember this word, which means "scam", "rip-off". Etymologically, it probably comes from harnais (“to harness”) in its informal sense of “to dress up ridiculously”. But that requires digging out quite a bit of history to find out why that led to the sense of "scam", not to mention the obscure sense of "dress up ridiculously". Time to think up a mnemonic.

So I ask 9 AI tools (10 if counting Google twice), "Give a mnemonic to help remember the French word 'arnaque'." The following are their answers, abbreviated:

Chatgpt.com: "A Real Nasty Act, Quite Underhanded and Evil"
DeepSeek.com: "The ARtful NAKed con artist scammed me."
Perplexity.ai: "Arnie’s knack is tricking people"
Mistral.ai: "An Ape Never Aquires Quality Electronics"
Copilot.microsoft.com: "A Really Nasty Act Quickly Uncovered Eventually"
Claude.ai: "Arnold's HACK"
Grok.com or X.ai: "A Rude Nasty Act, Quite Unfair, Exploits."
Qwen.ai: "A rat never asks quietly, unless it's a scam!"
Gemini.google.com: "A really nice antiquarian quickly understands exactly what's a scam", "All Roberts Need A Quick Un-doing of Everything. Arnaque means scam."
Google.com (directly, not through Gemini): "AR NO-AQUe (no water)"

We can see that many try to break up the word into single letters, much like those mnemonics school children use to remember the names of the planets in the solar system ("My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos"), or the order of the biological classification ("Dear King Phillip Came Over For Good Soup"). But honestly, this type of mnemonics are not the best to help remember a single word in a human language, because it's less effective if you completely break up the word. It's better to work on chunks of letters of the word. DeepSeek suggests "ar-" and -nak-", Perplexity "ar-" and "knack", Claude "Arn-" and "-ack", and Google "ar" and "n...-aqu-". After reviewing all these, I'd like to suggest a combination of DeepSeek's and Perplexity's mnemonics, e.g. "artful knack" (and reject "naked" as it's semantically far from "scam", and "Arnie" as it's not a common name). Claude's "Arnold's hack" is a good one, too, but "h" of "hack" somewhat blocks a mental association of "n" of "Arnold" with "a" of "hack". On the other hand, if the English word "knack" is not in your active vocabulary, "artful knack" may be inferior to "Arnold's hack".

Other than completely breaking up a word into single letters, AI's seem to have another tendency compared to human effort: it rarely incorporates the ending of a mnemonic word. Take as an example Spanish bruja, meaning "witch". I created the mnemonic "broom ninja", which vividly depicts a scene in which a witch sits across a broom and moves or possibly flies like a ninja. AI can come up with "broom" but will be hard pressed to think of "ninja" because "-ja" is the ending of a word.

AI has drastically improved our ability to do lots of things. This posting may be the first to explore and discuss its capability in generating mnemonics for foreign language vocabulary studies. Future work may be to fine tune a prompt so that AI can generate better mnemonics suitable to your own need.

Dementia, lying, denying, and forgetting

When you deprive somebody of his mind, he'll get dementia. This word is easy in various languages:

English: dementia
French: démence
Spanish: demencia
Italian: demenza

where the prefixes dé- and de- are considered privative, i.e. "marked as absence, removal, or loss", and the root, traced to Latin, means "mind". But things get slightly complicated if the root changes a little bit. The Latin word for "mind" can change to another word mentior or mentiri in infinitive, which means "to lie". According to Wiktionary, "[t]he meaning 'to lie' stems from a semantic shift 'to be inventive, have second thoughts' > 'to lie, conjure up'." The downstream reflexes all take this meaning:

French and Spanish: mentir, "to lie"
Italian: mentire, "to lie"

But we must not forget two words that take quite different meanings even though their prefix and the root remain almost the same:

French: démentir, "to deny (wrongdoing, scandal etc.)"
Italian: dimenticare, "to forget"

Démentir makes sense because when you remove or try to remove (dé-) a lie (the root, without the verb suffix), you're denying it. Dimenticare makes sense because if you lose (di-) your mind (the root, without the verb suffix), you forget something. But we still have to make a small effort to remember these two words because in Spanish you say negar, in Italian you say negare for "to deny", and in Spanish you say olvidar and in French you say oublier for "to forget", adding inconsistencies to this whole group of related words.

Spanish cruz, cruzar, crucero, cruzada

cruz (n.) cross. cruzar to cross. cruce crossroads, crossing, intersection. crucero (n.) cruise; (in Mexico) crossroads, crossing, intersection. cruzada crusade. From Latin crux, which also exists in English as in the crux of an argument. To remember these words, note cruz is the most basic, and its simple verb cruzar also has a basic meaning. Suffix -ero of crucero implies agency (as in vaquero because a cowboy drives or herds cows vacas) as a cruise moves itself; the meaning of “crossroads” in Mexican Spanish makes little sense but -ero may indicate a place. Suffix -ada of cruzada implies a group of people or things; a crusade is a group activity.

trimestre, "quarter", "trimester"

Trimestre is a word in multiple Romance languages, including Spanish, French, and Italian. Obviously it can be translated as "trimester" in English, as said of pregnancy, or of a school term. But more often it means "quarter", as in the first quarter unemployment data, which is los datos de desempleo del primer trimestre in Spanish, les données sur le chômage du premier trimestre in French, and i dati sulla disoccupazione del primo trimestre in Italian. The word is from Latin trimestris, from Latin tri- (“three”) + mensis (“month”) + -tris (noun suffix). It may appear perplexing that this word can mean, in fact, is more often translated as, “quarter”. But it’s reasonable if you think of its literal meaning, as we often do in learning words in any Romance language: the root means “month”, and there are three months in a quarter of a year (12=3x4). English quarter focuses on how many parts are in a year, while a Romance language on the number of months in each quarter. It also helps if you literally interpret the word semester, where the se- element meant “six” back in Latin (sex, “six”); a semester is six months.

It's said that the Aztec calendar divides a year into "18 months of 20 days each, plus an additional 5 days". If the ancient Romans had done the same and used trimestris to denote a period of three months, which is its literal meaning, then one trimester would equal to a sextus, meaning "sixth" in Latin, and English would probably call it a sextant, not a quarter.

Idioms using Spanish echar

Traditionally, choosing phrases and idioms as examples for a dictionary headword entry is largely based on the lexicographer's personal experiences or impressions. Choosing them according to frequency usage should be the new standard in future lexicography.

Wictionary for Spanish echar currently lists 112 derived terms, 107 of which are phrases or sentences. I use Google Ngram Viewer to check the usage frequency of 96 of them, after removing 11 that have a length of 5 or more tokens, the maximum allowed by the Ngram Viewer. The following are the idioms with a frequency higher than about 0.0004:

echar de menos, e.g. te echaré de menos (“I’ll miss you”, literally “I’ll find you missing”; etymologically echar here is a different word, from Portuguese achar “to find”, later confused with Spanish echar, but this idiom is very common)
echar un vistazo, e.g. echó un vistazo al coche (“he took a quick look at the car”)
echar mano de (“to make use of / take advantage of / draw upon”)
echar una mano (“to lend a hand”, a false friend of English to throw hands)
echarse a perder, e.g. la comida se ha echado a perder (“the food has gone bad”)
echar a andar (“to get going”)
echar la culpa (“to blame”)

I have incorporated these idioms in my Learning Spanish Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics (2nd ed.).

Google Ngram Viewer may be the best tool to check usage frequency of a word or phrase. You can not only see the current frequency, but also the historical trend. Before this technology, I used to submit each word or phrase (enclosed in double quotes) to Google or other search engines for a search and record the estimated hits. Searching for a hundred phrases one at a time would be very time-consuming. Thanks to Ngram Viewer, the labor is significantly reduced and it only took me about 10 minutes.

miel or miele "honey"

The word for "honey" in Romance languages is interesting in terms of its gender. Spelled miel, it is masculine in French, Asturian, and Romanian, but feminine in Spanish, Aragonese, and either masculine or feminine in Ladino. In Italian, it is spelled miele and is masculine. Spelled mel in Catalan, it is feminine, but in Galician and Portuguese, masculine. There doesn't seem to be any pattern between the gender and the geography of these languages; it could be of either gender even inside the Iberian Peninsula. The etymon in Latin, mel, is neuter. Before being inherited by various daughter languages, it probably changed to an intermediate form *melem, which is either masculine or feminine. This ambiguity led to lack of pattern as stated.

Another interesting fact is that this is one of the few words that travelled very far eastward in ancient times. The word for "honey" in Chinese, a totally unrelated language, is 蜜, pronounced as /mi/, pinyin mì, is said to be from Tocharian, a 5th to 8th century language in a branch of the Indo-European language family. The latest research about this origin may be the 2017 article "The Word for ‘Honey’ in Chinese, Tocharian and Sino-Vietnamese", by K. Meier, M. Peyrot. See also the references in the Wikipedia page for Tocharian languages.

Translation of one line in Gibran's poem "On Children"

Lebanese poet Khali Gibran's famous poem "On Children":

---begin quote---
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
---end quote---

The second line sounds philosophical and may not be easy to understand. When it's translated into other languages, some translators choose to alter the text to make it a little more understandable. Here are some examples:

French (from https://www.poesie.net/gibran1.htm ):
Ils sont les fils et les filles de l'appel de la Vie à elle-même,

Spanish (from https://educacionyatencioneficiente.c... ):
Son los hijos y las hijas de la llamada de la vida a sí misma.

Spanish (from https://esfacilsisabescomo.com/vuestr... :
Son hijos e hijas del anhelo de la Vida por sí misma.

Spanish (from https://www.grupotortuga.com/Khalil-G... ):
Son los hijos y las hijas de la Vida
que quiere seguir dando Vida.

German (from https://www.zitate.de/autor/Gibran%2C... ):
Sie sind die Söhne und Töchter der Sehnsucht des Lebens nach sich selbst.

Italian (from https://www.pensieriparole.it/aforism... ):
sono figli e le figlie della vita stessa.

We see that the second Spanish translation (using the word anhelo) and the German translation (Sehnsucht) literally translate the word "longing" in Gibran's poem. The French translation (appel) and the first Spanish translation (llamada) change the original "longing" to "call" or "calling". The third Spanish translation and the Italian one seem to be unhappy with the poetic language and opt to plainly say the words to the readers. Why this diversity in translation? What does this line really mean? It is actually not that hard. "Life's longing for itself", in this context of human procreation, simply means that life intends to reproduce life, just as the plain, "prosaic" third Spanish translation is saying, and in a corrupted and equally uninteresting way the Italian translation is saying. Changing "longing" to "calling" is not right, because they are different actions; when you long for something, you don't necessarily call out. For this reason, I consider both approaches, changing a key word or plainly interpreting the poetic line, mistranslation of a poem. A literal translation of this particular word "longing" in the case of the second Spanish translation and the German translation is appropriate.

A is bigger than B by x vs. x%

How do you say
This number is bigger than that number by 10. This number is bigger than that number by 10%.
in the three Romance languages?

French: Ce nombre est plus grand que ce nombre de 10. Ce nombre est plus grand que ce nombre de 10 %.
Spanish: Este número es mayor que ese número en / por 10. Este número es mayor que ese número en (un) 10%.
Italian: Questo numero è maggiore di quel numero di 10. Questo numero è maggiore di quel numero del 10%.

While English than is clearly translated as que, que, and di, in French, Spanish, and Italian, respectively, the preposition by that indicates the amount of difference has some complications in case of Spanish and Italian. French simply uses de. But Spanish uses en or por for a fixed difference, and en un and less frequently just en for a percentage; think of it as short for en un porcentaje. Italian's del is actually the combined form of di + il, as if it said "by the (percentage)".

Italian campione can mean either "champion" or "sample"

Champion is campeón in Spanish, champion in French, and campione in Italian. Sample is muestra in Spanish, échantillon in French, and campione in Italian. Only in Italian does the same word form take these two very different meanings. Is it because two different words happen to be spelled the same? No. Italian campione truly is one single word, from Latin campionem (“fighter”), and cognate with English and French champion, Spanish campeón. So how do we reconcile these two distinct meanings of Italian campione?

Here is an except from Learning Italian Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics (with minor changes):

According to Kruskal and Mosteller, two statisticians, the word initially meant “fighter”, then “champion”, and then “a sample of merchandise presumably as champion of the whole”. Here's my example to clarify their reasoning. When we say John Doe represents his team, it can mean that he’s a very good player in his team and so can represent the team (as a champion does), or that he’s closest to the average in his team so he represents a typical member the best (as a statistical sample does). The two senses conflate and we end up with one word that means either “champion” or “(statistical) sample” depending on the context.

Languages popular among polyglot language learners

In April 2014, an admin of the Facebook Polyglots group created a poll on the languages that group members were studying. A few years later, I suggested to this admin another poll be conducted, but she shows no interest. This month marks the 10th anniversary. On April 15, I created the second poll. The results as of today (April 27) are shown below, along with those of the 2014 poll. (Mandarin is an entry separate from Chinese because it was so 10 years ago. Chinese was and is below the 10th place so it's omitted here.)

___2014____________2024
1 French 935 ------- French 39
2 Spanish 807 ------ Spanish 38
3 German 799 ------ German 28
4 English 651 ------- Italian 25
5 Italian 448 -------- English 17
6 Russian 428 ------ Portuguese = Mandarin 16
7 Portuguese 341
8 Japanese 312 ----- Russian = Japanese 14
9 Mandarin 308
10 Arabic 276 ------- Arabic 11

Obviously, this year's poll participation is very much lower, definitely because I don't have the charisma of the group admin, and probably also because more such groups have been created on Facebook, diluting the interest of language lovers in this particular group. (I do see much less traffic in this group over the years, in spite of membership growth.) But even with these small numbers, we can still draw some conclusions:

* French remains at the top, Spanish in the 2nd place, German the 3rd. But Spanish is very close to French now, while 10 years ago it was barely above German. (Is this related to the rapid growth of the Hispanic population hence the importance of Spanish?)

* Italian has taken over English, by a large margin.

* Russian dropped to below Portuguese. (Related to the current world affairs?)

* I had expected Mandarin to drop or remain as is. But it seems to have gained a little.

* Arabic firmly stays in the 10th place.