2853: Why So Many Spanish Words start 'Es-'? (pt. 1)12, 2024

In Western European Romance languages, excluding Italian, there is always an E- in front of S+consonant, like in Spanish ‘estoy’ (‘I am’)  that used to be ‘sto’, and just look at these English cognates in Spanish: school → escuela (French: école), special → especial though not actually in ‘Español’ (‘Spanish’) which comes from ‘Hispania’. ‘Emerald’ is ‘esmeralda’ in Spanish, from ‘smaragdus’ in Latin, but French words not only gained the E like with Spanish and Portuguese, but also dropped the S, hence where English got it.

This occurs in words that developed from Latin beginning in SP, ST, and SC [sk]—or in other words <S> + [unvoiced plosive]—and the vowel [e] was added for phonetic ease to not have to begin a vowel this way. 

While this sound combination may not look so difficult, especially from an English speaking background, keep in mind, Romance languages tend to articulate the /s/ sound further back than in Germanic languages (see more [s̠]) and these sorts of slight differences will culminate in very large changes over whole words.

There will be more on this phenomenon in Germanic languages, including English, in the post tomorrow.