Part II · Chapter 7

Pocket Maps

This chapter isn't meant to be read straight through. It's a toolbox: a short map for each language you're likely to want to learn. Go straight to the one you need, and come back when you start another.

Each map has four parts: how far that language is from English, the rules that pay off most, a trap, and a pronunciation tip.

How far is each language?

Before the maps, a number that helps you calibrate what's ahead. Linguists have gathered, for many languages, how to say about 170 basic concepts: things like hand, water, sleep, red, night. They're words every language has and that rarely get borrowed. With that list you can measure what percentage of those basic words are co-derivatives between two languages: the same inherited word, with another accent.

Here are the numbers for English, calculated on an expert database called IE-CoR:

Reading this table correctly saves you frustration. With German or Dutch, more than half of the basic words are yours with another accent: your job is to learn the rules of the accent. With Spanish, only one in five. Does that mean Spanish is hopeless for an English speaker? Not at all. It means two things. First: for Spanish basic vocabulary you'll have to memorize more, and Grimm's law helps you with the fifth that is shared inheritance. Second: this table only measures basic inherited words. It doesn't count the thousands of learned words English took from Latin and French, which are exactly the ones you saw in chapter 5. In learned vocabulary, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese are much closer to you than this 20% suggests.

Map of Spanish

Distance: far in basic vocabulary (20%), very close in learned vocabulary.

Rules that pay off most:

1. The learned-layer bridge (chapter 5): Spanish everyday words are often your fancy words. Padre ↔ paternal, noche ↔ nocturnal, diente ↔ dental, ojo ↔ ocular, pie ↔ pedestrian, cabello ↔ capillary.
2. Grimm's law (chapter 6), read backwards: where English has f, Spanish has p (father/padre, fish/pez); where English has t, Spanish has d (tooth/diente, ten/diez); where English has h, Spanish has k (heart/corazón, horn/cuerno); where English has th, Spanish has t (three/tres).
3. Silent h = lost f (chapter 6): hacer ↔ fact, hijo ↔ filial, hierro ↔ ferrous, hablar ↔ fable, horno ↔ furnace.
4. An e before s + consonant. Spanish doesn't start words with s followed by a consonant, so it adds an e: school ↔ escuela, state ↔ estado, special ↔ especial, student ↔ estudiante.
5. Regular endings. -tion → -ción (nation ↔ nación), -ty → -dad (university ↔ universidad), -ous → -oso (famous ↔ famoso).
6. Simpler spelling. ph → f (philosophy ↔ filosofía), th → t (theater ↔ teatro).

Trap: false friends of kind 1, relatives who changed jobs: embarazada (pregnant, not embarrassed), actual (current, not actual), éxito (success, not exit), librería (bookstore, not library), carpeta (folder, not carpet). And the strangers of kind 2, which aren't relatives even though they look like twins: mucho doesn't come from much, nor haber from have, nor día from day. (Chapter 12 tells you why that resemblance still matters.)

Pronunciation: Spanish has five pure vowels, always pronounced the same, and a rhythm that gives each syllable about the same time: ca-ra-me-lo, four even beats. English squeezes unstressed syllables; Spanish doesn't, and that's the first thing your accent will give away. The r between vowels is a quick tap (pero, "but"), the rr is a trill (perro, "dog"). B and v sound the same. The h is silent. The j sounds like a strong English h, made further back.

Map of French

Distance: 20% in basic vocabulary, but English has been soaking up French words since the Norman conquest of 1066. Much of your learned vocabulary is French.

Rules that pay off most:

1. The lost s. Many French words lost an s that English kept, and French marks the loss with a hat on the vowel (^) or with é: forest ↔ forêt, hospital ↔ hôpital, beast ↔ bête, school ↔ école, state ↔ état. When you see a circumflex, try putting an s after the vowel.
2. Latin ca → French cha/che: chant ↔ chanter; Spanish cantar, campo, caballo, casa ↔ French chanter, champ, cheval, chez.
3. The f stays: French faire, fils, fer, fil sit next to your fact, filial, ferrous.
4. Latin ct → it: nuit, huit, lait (night, eight, milk).

Trap: French writes many consonants it no longer pronounces, especially at the end. If you take the skeleton from the spelling, it will come out longer than the one in the mouth. Front is written with five letters and said roughly frõ: its skeleton is f · r. Remember the rule of chapter 2: sound rules.

Pronunciation: rounded vowels English doesn't have (the u of lune, the eu of feu), nasal vowels, and an r made at the back of the throat. Listen a lot before you speak.

Map of German

Distance: the closest of the big languages (56%). Many of your everyday words are German words with another accent.

Rules that pay off most:

1. The second shift (chapter 6): ten/zehn, two/zwei, tongue/Zunge, heart/Herz, water/Wasser, apple/Apfel, pepper/Pfeffer, make/machen, book/Buch, bread/Brot.
2. Spelling vs sound. German v sounds like f: Vater is said fah-ter. German w sounds like v: Wasser is vasser. Take the skeleton from the sound.
3. What German shares with you, it shares with Spanish differently. German Vater, Fisch, voll, drei line up with your father, fish, full, three, and all of them line up with Spanish padre, pez, lleno, tres through Grimm's law.

Trap: Gift in German means poison, not present (though it really is a relative of your gift: the old word meant "something given," and German used it as a polite way of saying "poison"). Rat means advice, not rat.

Pronunciation: German has a soft ch (as in ich) and a rough one (as in Buch), vowels with umlauts (ü, ö, ä), and a very clear way of separating words. It's a language that makes more sense read aloud than read silently.

Map of Italian

Distance: 20% in basic vocabulary, very close in learned vocabulary, and very close to Spanish.

Rules that pay off most:

1. The f stays: fare, figlio, fumo (smoke), farina (flour), next to your fact, filial, fume.
2. Latin cl, pl, fl → chi, pi, fi: chiave (key), pieno (full; your plenty), fiamma (your flame), chiamare (to call; your clamor).
3. Latin ct → tt: notte, otto, latte.
4. Double consonants. Italian pronounces many consonants double (notte, latte, fiamma). When you take the skeleton, count each double consonant once.

Trap: burro in Italian is butter. Caldo means hot (and here's the compass from chapter 4 again: the same code as English cold, Χ·Λ·Θ, on the hot side). Salire means to go up, not to leave.

Pronunciation: Italian has clear vowels and a rhythm close to Spanish. The new thing for you is the double consonants, which are held for an extra instant: pala (shovel) isn't palla (ball). Train them from the start.

Map of Portuguese

Distance: 20% from English, but 84% from Spanish. If you already know some Spanish, Portuguese is the cheapest next language there is.

Rules that pay off most:

1. The f stays: fazer, filho, ferro, falar (to speak), forno.
2. Latin cl, pl, fl → ch (said sh): chave (key), chuva (rain), chamar (to call), chama (flame), cheio (full).
3. Latin ct → it: noite, oito, leite.

Trap: puxar looks like Spanish empujar ("to push"), but in Portuguese it means pull. Both come from Latin pulsare, "to push": relatives that ended up meaning opposite things.

Pronunciation: the hard part of Portuguese isn't understanding it on paper, it's hearing it. It has nasal vowels (canção, song; mão, hand) and open and closed vowels that tell words apart (avó, grandmother; avô, grandfather).