When I was learning Spanish, it puzzled me to no end that the word for “olive” was “aceituna” (ah-say-TOO-na). In French, it’s olive. In Italian, it’s olivo. What made Spanish different? When I learned the Arabic word for olive, though, it all made sense: zeitun (zay-toon). And when you add the definite article to it, it becomes as-zeitun. This applies to all sorts of other words.
Aceite is “oil” in Spanish. Zeyt is “oil” in Arabic. Cereza is “cherry” in Spanish. Ceriss is “cherry” in Arabic. Zumo is “juice” in Spanish. Zum is “juice” in Arabic. Once I figured this out, I went to Wikipedia to confirm my suspicions, and there’s a nice long list of Arabic cognates in Spanish for those of you who are curious. It was pleasing to see concrete evidence of something that I had known abstractly before. And it makes Arabic a little less daunting.