Learning Spanish Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics (2nd ed.)

This book was initially published in 2016. Since then, I have added a few hundred new headwords to this second edition. In addition, major work is underway to revise existing entries, not merely correcting errors. (Some of these revisions are documented in the Suggestions and Updates section on the main page.) Many helpful hints and mnemonics are added, etymology is re-examined, sense development, nuanced connotations and synonym distinctions are better described, and most notably, copious example phrases and sentences are provided especially for the words that are understood better in a context. With extensive use of more references including the Origen de las palabras website and E. Roberts' Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language, word origins and their connections to modern meanings and English cognates are significantly improved. The most significant structural change is sorting of the headwords, now alphabetically instead of by usage frequency.

• Introduction and Notes
• Sample pages

Contact me by email to yong321@yahoo.com or by filling the form with comments or suggestions.

Availability

If you're interested in this revised edition, the full manuscript can be requested on a donation basis. With a $15 or more donation through Venmo (use my venmo username @Yong-Huang-13 or email yong321@yahoo.com), Zelle or Quickpay, Paypal, or by other means, you will receive a copy of the e-book, on the condition that the received copy is only shared within your immediate family. In the future, a few days before Christmas, you will receive an updated version of the book for free, every year.

Timeline

• 2014 Started the book project
• 2016-02 Published the book through Xlibris
• 2020-08 Started to revise and expand the book, temporarily called 2nd ed.
• 2024-05 Made it available to the public on donation basis
• 2024-12 The 2024 indexed edition is sent to all donors. The book has 296 pages of headwords (excluding Intro, Notes, Appendix, and Index).
• 2025-07 Forwent the long tradition of sorting the words by frequency and the words are now sorted alphabetically, merging the words in the Appendix. The reason for this big change is mainly that the frequency list from RAE is not a list of lemmas (canonical forms of words). With this change, no index is needed and the book will differ from its sister books in the series, Learning French and Italian Vocabulary books.

Yong Huang
August 2020 — July 2025

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