esponja
“esponja” — sponge in Basque. Noun, level A1, topic — food and drink. A loan from Spanish esponja, openly admitted. The sponge washes the dishes and drinks the water. In a live sentence: “Esponjarekin garbitu dit platerak ama.” — Mom washed the dishes with the sponge. One of 254 words in the set “food and drink” in the Basque course.
In short
| Written in Basque | esponja |
| Translation | sponge |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
A loan from Spanish esponja, openly admitted. The sponge washes the dishes and drinks the water
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Esponjarekin garbitu dit platerak ama.Mom washed the dishes with the sponge.
Nearby words: food and drink
A menu, a market, a shop sign, the question “what is this?”. Food is the most frequent subject of the first weeks and the safest excuse to start talking.
- kafeacoffeeThe article -a has grown onto the end: kafe+a. You order without it: kafe bat — one coffee
- teateaTe + the article a = 'tea' — only the pronunciation tells it apart from the English word
- urawaterA two-letter word, ur — and even it wears the article: ur+a. In Bilbao you ask for it just as short: ur bat
- ogiabreadOgi + a. The bakery in Basque is okela — a native word, not the Spanish one
- gaztacheeseThe famous Idiazabal sheep cheese — Idiazabalgo gazta: the same word in the name
- haragiameatCuts are built descriptively: behi-haragia — beef, literally 'cow meat'
- arrainafishA fisherfolk's land: arrantzale — 'fisher', arrain saltzailea — 'fishmonger'. Fish in the sea and on the plate is one word
- frutakfruitA collective in the plural: fruta + ak. One piece of fruit is fruta bat
- sagarraappleSagar + the article, and the r doubles at the seam: sagar+a → sagarra. The same fusion makes ogia from ogi and ura from ur
- laranjaorangeBoth the fruit and the color: soineko laranja — an orange dress. The word arrived from Valencia through Spanish
Test yourself
Five questions from the same set — “food and drink”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.
- How do you say “sponge” in Basque?
A loan from Spanish esponja, openly admitted. The sponge washes the dishes and drinks the water
- How do you say “fish” in Basque?
A fisherfolk's land: arrantzale — 'fisher', arrain saltzailea — 'fishmonger'. Fish in the sea and on the plate is one word
- How do you say “water” in Basque?
A two-letter word, ur — and even it wears the article: ur+a. In Bilbao you ask for it just as short: ur bat
- How do you say “orange” in Basque?
Both the fruit and the color: soineko laranja — an orange dress. The word arrived from Valencia through Spanish
- How do you say “meat” in Basque?
Cuts are built descriptively: behi-haragia — beef, literally 'cow meat'
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “sponge” in Basque?
«esponja». In a live sentence: “Esponjarekin garbitu dit platerak ama.” — Mom washed the dishes with the sponge. Noun, level A1, from the set “food and drink”.
Why does this word look the way it does?
A loan from Spanish esponja, openly admitted. The sponge washes the dishes and drinks the water. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.