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Fruits of Labor


Today, I had the opportunity to sit in the language acquisition room while a teacher was working with a group of Dual Language Spanish/English students.  The students were writing and one student asked the teacher, ¿Cómo se dice <fun> en Español?  The teacher said <disfrutar>.  Immediately my orthographic mind began to dissect the Spanish word <disfrutar>.  I made the hypothesis that the word sum for <disfrutar> might be:
            dis + fru + to + ar à disfrutar

I wondered why the word would begin with the prefix dis- and how I understood the use of that prefix.  I also wondered if there could be an etymological connection between <fruit> in English and <frutar> in Spanish from Latin.

An etymological dictionary helped to validate some of my assumptions. The word <disfrutar> comes to Spanish from Latin and is also related to the base <frui> that gives us <frugal> in Spanish.

Morphologically the word is constructed with the prefix dis- which has many implications but, in this case, it is used as an intensifier. The Latin root is <fructus> which has a denotation of enjoyment, delight, consume or fruit. The suffix -to is used in Spanish to form participles and indicates that the object is receiving the action.  Finally, the -ar suffix is used to create verbs.

My hypothesis about the structure of the word <disfrutar> seemed to be accurate but more importantly after looking at the structure and meaning my understanding of the richness of this word grew from my investigation. 


I now need to see if the English word <fruit> comes to English from Latin and if it comes from <fructus> as well.  I will spend some time with <frugal> in English as well.  I am so glad that I spent time investigating <disfrutar>.  I enjoyed the fruits of my labor.

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