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I am studying Spanish in, I hate to admit it, my early 60s and it is not easy. My synapses are clogged and closed, so I must hammer in the verbs and verb conjugations. I found it helps when I can relate a word to one it closely resembles in English. Today's verb recoger means to collect. This looked close to reconnoiter. I checked the etymology. The infinitive in Latin is recognoscere. Then the French iteration (I only learned how to laugh in French, so I will not even attempt that derivative) and our own dear English "recognize". There, doc, I did all or your work for you!

Well, you did do some work, but you didn't quite explain how we got from reclaiming your land to spying.

As to needing a hammer, that's why I like to say that often I need pneumatic devices to remember things. They need to be drilled into my head.

One may claim and reclaim. In order to recognize, one must cognize or at least cogitate. Why can't one connoiter?