Why are so many words in Spanish the same as in English?

Question

Notice how all these words are nearly the same:
la necesidad = necessity
la ambicion = ambition
la felicidad = felicity
el caracter = character
terminar = terminate
el bus = bus
profundo, a = profound

My question is: Are these words so similar because Spanish took them FROM English? Or was it that ENGLISH took them from Spanish? Who took the words from who? Which language had these words originally that other one was able to borrow them?

Answer 1

No. It is not that English took them from Spanish, or that Spanish took them from English. It is that BOTH of them took the same words from LATIN .

In Latin, the word "necessary' comes from "ne" -- not .and " cedere" --to give way.

"ambition" comes from the Latin "ambitio"-- part of "ambio"--going around (to solicit votes of the people.)

"felicity" comes from the Latin "felicitas" ---happiness; from "felix, felicis, ---happy.

"character" comes from the Latin "character", meaning an engraving instrument.

"terminate" comes from the Latin "terminare," to end, limit.

"bus" comes from the Latin "omnibus" ,meaning "for all"

"profound" is derived from "profundus", and "fundus"--depths. , meaning very deep or low;.

Answer 2

English took them from Spanish.

by the way bus = autobus/omnibus


A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) that estimated the origin of English words as follows:

Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Other Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English): 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%
Other estimates have also been made:

French, 40%[6]
Greek, 13%[7]
Anglo-Saxon (Old English), 10%[8]
Danish, 2%[9]
Dutch, 1%[10]
And, as about 50% of English is derived from Latin--directly or otherwise--[11] another 10 to 15% can be attributed to direct borrowings from that language.

Answer 3

It comes from the fact that a lot of the English language has base in Latin (the core root of Spanish)
Latin being a root to a number of languages in the world
there are similiar comparisions that can be made of words in a number of the world's languages !!

I'm not saying here that the ENTIRE English language IS BASED in Latin ---just that it has Some of its base there---there was a strong Latin presence and influence in England at early formative years at one point in time---and adaptations were made and words and phrases were adopted that have been there ever since !!!

Answer 4

It's difficult to answer this because English is mostly accepted as having Germanic origins rather than Latin origins, however English is considered as a new language and it's interesting because we could say that the grammar part is similar to Germanic languages while most of the vocabulary is more associated with Latin languages.
And all the words you provide as an example most of them have many synonyms that don't show similarities with Spanish ex:
terminate=finish and finish is more associated with french verb finir.
What I mean is that English is a language that have a lot of synonyms to many words that are similar to Latin languages and many more; I've read somewhere that English has approx: 400,000 words(this number is huge compared to spanish "less than 150,000 words" or French less than 70,000 words") which it means that English language is evolving for it's cosmopolitan culture, mixing it's own language with others languages.
Actually mostly with Spanish and vice-verse.

Answer 5

English is a mixture of Old English and Old French. Most of the words you mention are similar because French and Spanish come from Latin. The exception is 'bus' which was borrowed from English by Spanish.

Answer 6

Spanish is a Romance language, based on Latin, and English has a lot of its vocabulary from Norman French (since 1066 and all that), which in its turn was a Romance language.

Answer 7

People are right. Normans brought Latin words to England .
And "bus" is the short form for "omnibus" - (a vehicle) for everybody (locomotion) - this is a Latin word. Spanish borrowed bus from English

Answer 8

English is Germanic and Spanish is Latin, but both are based out of Europe. Almost all languages have latin influences because the Roman empire kicked so much butt in history. Now languages are being influenced by English because right now our country is dominant, people want us/british etc tourist dollars. Its impossible to tell, theres so much give and take with language.

Answer 9

Most borrowed from Latin. English has also taken many words from Spanish.

Answer 10

Take care - a common root does not mean the same modern meaning. Google "false friends spanish" for deceptive cognates!

Answer 11

Neither of your explanations is true. Spanish and English share a common heritage. They are both Indo-European languages, and they both have many words in particular that descended from Latin. That is the reason for the large number of cognates between Spanish and English. There are also words in common that came from Greek and other sources. But they didn't usually borrow them directly from each other.

It is true that Spanish and English have borrowed from each other, though.