How to remember Spanish for winter and season - plus French and Italian and Portuguese

I already know French. What next?

Now I am doing Duolingo Italian language learning exercises. But I am also learning Spanish. It helps that I already know French.

One of today's sentences was :
Inverno es una e s t a ç i o n .  Winter is a season. (I've inserted spaces to stop spell checker changing the word, although I clicked x for no on the suggested alternative.)

The first time I tried to remember inverno is winter I remembered invert-o, so I checked again.
Inverno.

No - it was invierno.

Later I checked reverse translate winter on Google and up came the Portuguese I N V I E R NO.

Oh No!

I tried Italian.

Inverno.

No wonder I am getting confused.

I now have all three:

Portuguese is  - I N V E R N O

I T A L I A N is IN VERNO

But Spanish is I N V I E R N O.

That upsets my first idea that the Italians added the I for Italy. They don't.

I told another member of my family. The pointed out that the word is similar to the French HIVER for winter. That is similar to our word Hibernate.

So now how do I remember which language has the extra I?

I can do it geographically. And visually.

oIo

Portuguese on the west of left of the map is just o.

SpaIn In the mIddle is invIerno.

Italy on the East is just in - v - erno. (Spell checker prefers inferno.)

France and Spain are adjacent and Spain has the I like France in  h I v e r.

Now I remember:
wINter IN - verno
 Winter inVerno
wintER - in v- ER - no
wiNter - in v er N - no
NO I don't like winter - inferno.

Portuguese and Italian in-verno.

But Spain in the middle is INV-I-erno.

Winter is the Season  in Spanish - when we are stationed in Spain.
estaçion

Add the cedilla under the c . Press down on the letter c on a keyboard and hold it. Up comes a choice of accents for the letter c. You just need the first and most frequent in both French and Spanish. ç

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and author and English and languages teacher.