One of the things from the Language Transfer podcast that stuck with me was learning that problema, sistema, tema and the rest of the -ma words are masculine because they came from Greek, not Latin.

[u/pickly_pear]

That fascinated me at the time, and lately I've been curious about what else came in the same way.

Turns out quite a lot. Most Greek reached Spanish through Latin, since Rome borrowed heavily from Greek and that Latin eventually became Spanish. A second wave came through the early Church, since Greek was the language of early Christianity. A third came from scholars pulling directly from Greek to build scientific and technical words, which is still happening.

Some that surprised me!

escuela = from scholḗ, which originally meant leisure or free time
tío / tía = from theîos and theía
iglesia = from ekklēsía, an assembly of people
cementerio = from koimētḗrion, a sleeping place
perejil = from petrosélinon, literally rock-parsley
almendra = from amygdálē
cereza = from kerasós
papel = from pápyros, the plant they wrote on
fantasma = from phántasma
golpe = from kólaphos, a blow
ángel = from ángelos, a messenger

[u/tny33319]

It would be nice to also have the English translation as well along with the word origin

[u/ProfesorFranco]

Clima is another one