'Hoy' is the Spanish for 'today', and it carries a silent letter with nothing to do - a written 'h' that isn't sounded, and never was.
Take the 'h' off and you're close to where 'hoy' began - the same short Latin phrase that gave Italian 'oggi' its shape. The cards trace how it wore down to 'hoy', explain where that silent 'h' came from, and point out a small word for 'day' hiding inside it that a learner already knows.
• An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each, following 'hoy' back through its worn-down forms to the Latin phrase behind it
• The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern Spanish, with a date at each stage the record allows
• A sources page listing where every claim comes from
• A short guide for the adult on how to use the cards
The PDF prints two ways, and you choose which suits you. The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a single binder ring, so a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out in order. You print, laminate, trim and bind these yourself; the cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in sequence. The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page - print it and it's ready, no laminating or cutting - for the pencil case or the middle of a lesson. You'll need a printer; a laminator and a ring are needed only for the deck.
Because the large cards come apart, there's more to do with them than read. Rebuild the timeline in order, and stop on the card where the silent 'h' appears. Put 'hoy' and 'día' side by side and find what they share. Set 'hoy' against French 'aujourd'hui' and count how many times each language says 'day'. Hold up the English-cousin cards and sort them back to the root. If you own more than one word from El Taller Raíz, clip the shared cards onto one ring and put the day-words together. It's the same cards, talked through and handled differently - adult-led, a few minutes at a time, never a drill.
'Hoy' is short and irregular - a silent 'h', a spelling that doesn't match its sound - and that's exactly the kind of word a learner mis-writes. Tracing it back explains every oddity - where the 'h' came from, why it's silent, and how a word the learner already knows is hiding inside it.
Made for secondary Spanish learners at Key Stages 3 and 4, but it suits a wider range:
• Anyone who likes where words come from
• Spanish learners in Key Stages 3 and 4, and GCSE students meeting 'hoy'
• Home-educated children
• Learners who find vocabulary hard to hold when it's taught as isolated words - including dyslexic and working-memory profiles
• Parents brushing up their own Spanish, or studying alongside a child
• Adults coming back to Spanish after school
This isn't a first step into Spanish. A learner should already be meeting 'hoy' in lessons or reading - the cards explain a word a child is encountering, not the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met it at all yet, this will come too early.
Related resources
• In El Taller Raíz: 'día' and 'buenos días' are the nearest neighbours - 'hoy' hides the same 'día' inside it, and 'buenos días' is that word made plural.
• For anyone who likes the links across languages: Italian 'oggi' and French 'aujourd'hui' come from the same Latin phrase as 'hoy'.
• In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
• Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins from the 'dies' root - 'diary' and 'diurnal'.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Available now as a PDF download.
'Hoy' is the Spanish for 'today', and it carries a silent letter with nothing to do - a written 'h' that isn't sounded, and never was.
Take the 'h' off and you're close to where 'hoy' began - the same short Latin phrase that gave Italian 'oggi' its shape. The cards trace how it wore down to 'hoy', explain where that silent 'h' came from, and point out a small word for 'day' hiding inside it that a learner already knows.
• An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each, following 'hoy' back through its worn-down forms to the Latin phrase behind it
• The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern Spanish, with a date at each stage the record allows
• A sources page listing where every claim comes from
• A short guide for the adult on how to use the cards
The PDF prints two ways, and you choose which suits you. The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a single binder ring, so a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out in order. You print, laminate, trim and bind these yourself; the cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in sequence. The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page - print it and it's ready, no laminating or cutting - for the pencil case or the middle of a lesson. You'll need a printer; a laminator and a ring are needed only for the deck.
Because the large cards come apart, there's more to do with them than read. Rebuild the timeline in order, and stop on the card where the silent 'h' appears. Put 'hoy' and 'día' side by side and find what they share. Set 'hoy' against French 'aujourd'hui' and count how many times each language says 'day'. Hold up the English-cousin cards and sort them back to the root. If you own more than one word from El Taller Raíz, clip the shared cards onto one ring and put the day-words together. It's the same cards, talked through and handled differently - adult-led, a few minutes at a time, never a drill.
'Hoy' is short and irregular - a silent 'h', a spelling that doesn't match its sound - and that's exactly the kind of word a learner mis-writes. Tracing it back explains every oddity - where the 'h' came from, why it's silent, and how a word the learner already knows is hiding inside it.
Made for secondary Spanish learners at Key Stages 3 and 4, but it suits a wider range:
• Anyone who likes where words come from
• Spanish learners in Key Stages 3 and 4, and GCSE students meeting 'hoy'
• Home-educated children
• Learners who find vocabulary hard to hold when it's taught as isolated words - including dyslexic and working-memory profiles
• Parents brushing up their own Spanish, or studying alongside a child
• Adults coming back to Spanish after school
This isn't a first step into Spanish. A learner should already be meeting 'hoy' in lessons or reading - the cards explain a word a child is encountering, not the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met it at all yet, this will come too early.
Related resources
• In El Taller Raíz: 'día' and 'buenos días' are the nearest neighbours - 'hoy' hides the same 'día' inside it, and 'buenos días' is that word made plural.
• For anyone who likes the links across languages: Italian 'oggi' and French 'aujourd'hui' come from the same Latin phrase as 'hoy'.
• In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
• Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins from the 'dies' root - 'diary' and 'diurnal'.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Available now as a PDF download.
