Talking Latin stems

Spanish and English share Latin stems.

• entretener to entertain
• atener to abide by 
• retener to retain
• sostener to sustain
• contener to contain
• detener to detain
• tener to have, posses
• obtener to obtain
• mantener o maintain

Note the root 'tain' and 'tener' both come from Latin tenere.

So, in learning Spanish I discover the roots of English and I know how to spell all the words from the stem. I also know from the prefix how to derive meaning, mostly.  Latin was like the 'c' language for parchment.

My flash card system has one of these lists for each of the major stems from Latin.  I can see all the conformality with English stems, using the same set of prefixes.