Learning Spanish vocabulary can be a tedious task, and many people benefit from using mnemonic devices — little tricks that aid the memory. One person who wrote to me recently, Steven, said what has helped him in learning the names of body parts is to find an English word that is related to the word to be learned.

For example, the Spanish word for "hand" is mano, which is closely related to the English word "manual," referring to doing something by hand.

Fortunately, Steven's method is fairly easy to implement, because nearly all the Spanish words for parts of the body come from Latin, and those Latin words followed a complicated route to become part of English. For many people, learning vocabulary this way might be more bother than it's worth — but at the least, it's a great way to learn about Spanish and English etymology. Often, the Spanish and English words we use every day are more closely connected than we realize. Here are some more examples of English words related to the Spanish names for parts of the body:

• cabeza (head) and "cabbage," both connected with Latin word caput, meaning "head"
• cuello (neck) and "collar," from the Latin collum, meaning "neck"
• pecho (chest or bosom) and "pectoral," from the Latin pectus
• ojo (eye) and "ocular," from the Latin oculus

Some connections with English aren't so obvious. For example, the Spanish cadera, meaning "hip," comes from the Greek word kathedra, which referred to a chair or bench. The Greek word obviously is the source of "cathedral"/catedral — a place to sit, while in Spanish it also morphed into the word used to refer to the part of the skeleton used for sitting. And the Spanish word for "hair," pelo, is related to the English word "pile" when said of a carpet.

The best place online to find the etymology of Spanish words is the Diccionario de la lengua española. English etymology can be found in many places; my favorite is the American Heritage Dictionary.