When I was a child the brand of salsa my parents bought at the supermarket came in a slender bottle and had an image of a thermometer printed along the edge of the label to remind us gringos that this was chili sauce, not chilly sauce. This salsa didn’t push the mercury over 72 degrees Fahrenheit but it seemed like a hot sauce at the time. Now I’m all grown up and I’ve learned that Mexicans don’t slop hot sauce on their tacos anyway. Hot in Spanish is caliente, like calorie, the English unit of energy. A salsa caliente would be a sauce warmed over the fire. The salsa my parents bought was (barely) a salsa picante, as in the English word piquant for sharp, biting, or pungent. But it’s not just the sauces that are tasted differently by the English and Spanish tongues. Knowledge itself is spoken of in a distinct manner by each language.
In English we can “know the way to San Jose,” and we can personally “know” any number of California gubernatorial candidates. If we want to we can even speak delicately of sexual intercourse as “knowing” as in Genesis 4:1, “And Adam knew Eve.” But in Spanish these types of knowledge are as distinct as chili and chilly.

Saber is the Spanish verb to use when speaking of understanding how to do something. Yo sé como preparar una salsa picante muy sabrosa. I know how to make a tasty picante sauce. ¿Sabe Usted? Do you know? Saber is also used for the type of knowledge that makes up arcane wisdom. Plato was a wise man, a Sabio. In archaic Spanish the letters b and v were used interchangeably as they are voiced identically in speech. In colloquial frontier American English the Spanish verb saber was put to work as “savvy.” Hollywood’s black and white Lone Ranger was a masked horseman savvy in the pursuit of evil doers and the application of vigilante justice. “Hi Ho Silver!” His faithful Indian companion was named Tonto, which is Spanish for stupid. Was this name a screenwriter’s deliberate slur? ¿Quién sabe? Who knows?

Conocer is the Castilian verb for knowing when we are speaking about being familiar with something, some place, or someone. “Y conoció Adam a Eva.” And Adam knew Eve. Los dos conocian el huerto de Edén. The two were familiar with the garden of Eden. Conocer comes from the Latin verb cognoscere meaning to find out, recognize, learn. English preserves fragments of this Latin verb in our words cognoscenti and reconnaissance. A cognoscenti has a profound appreciation for and understanding of a subject, usually an artistic oeuvre or some such refined pursuit like food, wine, or fashion. Conocimiento is the Spanish word for this knowledge that comes from such a deep familiarity with a topic. Reconnaissance means in English to venture out to learn and become familiar with.

Curiously the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve harvested in el huerto de Edén is usually translated as el árbol de ciencia del bien y del mal. Ciencia, or science, means knowledge in Spanish but science as we know it is may be the discipline we would look last to for an understanding of good and evil. Certainly no scientific name for the tree de ciencia del bien y del mal is offered up in Genesis but it almost certainly was not a manzano, or apple tree. The earliest apples came from the Caucasus, well to the north of Eden. It is interesting, however, that in Spanish the verb saber means both to know and to taste. “La fruta del árbol de ciencia no sabe a manzana” means the fruit of the tree of knowledge doesn’t taste like an apple. “Esto sabe bein y esa sabe mal” means this tastes good and that tastes bad. Our word savor and the Spanish verb saber are both cognitively related to the Latin verb sapere which means to taste, know, be wise.

Ciencia tells us we are homo sapiens, the wise homos, the knowing homos, the homos with taste. ¿Qué sabe usted? What do you know? Yo sé que no todos los latinos les gustan las salsas picantes. Mi compañero España prefiere la comida poco picante. Pero Don Gerardo – hijole – Don Gera come chiles crudo que saben a napalm.

Yo no sé. – I don’t know.
Yo sé. – I know.
El sabe. – He knows.

Conocer – to know a person
Yo conozco a Amparo. – I know Amparo.
Ella no me conoce. – She doesn’t know me.

Bueno – good
buenísimo – great
bién – good, well, yes
el fil, el campo – field

la huerta – orchard
el cultivo, la granja – farm