night - nocturnal

The Romance word for "night" is nocte, like "nocturnal". It changes according to a fairly predictable pattern. We're going to throw in a few bonus words here to show you.

Start with nocte (night), octo (eight), lacte (milk), facto (fact) (these are objective forms in Latin) and you get:

Spanish noche (no-chay), ocho, leche, hecho

Italian notte (note-tay), otto, latte, fatto

French nuit (nwee), huit, lait, fait

The "oct" in "nocturnal" becomes "och" in Spanish, "ott" in Italian and "uit" in French. As you can see in the list, there are other patterns. We're not going to learn them all now, but if you remember one-fourth of this entry, you'll know enough to remember:

English night, Spanish noche, Italian notte, French nuit.