Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. By extension, the term "the etymology (of a word)" means the origin of the particular word. It is important to note that words in a language belong to certain Language Families. These are the groups of words that are in the same language and share similar characteristics. There is a connection between the Romance languages - Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian and Portuguese because they originate from a language spoken by Romans - Latin. When you're learning a new language, a cognate is an easy word to remember because it looks and means the same thing as a word you already know.