Linguistic Terror Watch: You Might Be Speaking Spanish Without Even Knowing It

A new book “Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries: English Words that Come from Spanish,” -warns- teaches that Spanish has been infiltrating the English language for centuries. It’s like an -armada- English word for “armada” in your mouth, really. Shit, you could be speaking Spanish right now:

“I meant the book to be about the words we never would suspect are from Spanish,” said editor and etymologist Patrick Taylor.

Words like alfalfa, for instance, came into English via Spain, by way of Iran, where the plant is native.

Mosquito, adapted from “little fly” in Spanish, began to be used in English during Colonial times. Hurricane has its roots in Taíno language.

“I hope that the book will remind Anglophone readers of important parts of U.S. history that they may have forgotten, or never learned in the first place, like the Mexican-American War,” Taylor said.

“I also hope that Hispanophone readers of the book will enjoy learning about the unsuspected Spanish origins of the words they may use when speaking English — like hazard or jade or alligator or intransigent.”

So, what have we learned here? That pretty much all the words for the most terrible things ever have their origins in Spanish: mosquito, hurricane, alligator, hazard. Florida.

Spanish conquista - one word at a time [Ny Daily News]