I moved to Chile in 2011 and started to learn Spanish for the first time. While I was out for dinner one night, I asked the waiter what "hongos" were. Mushrooms, he explained. I realised that "hongos" was similar to the English word "fungi". I had already noticed that "hacer" (to do or make) is similar to its Latin equivalent "facere", whence we derive the English word fact.
So I did some digging to find out why the initial 'f' and 'h' were interchanged in words of the same origin. I learnt that most Latin words that began with an 'f' followed by a vowel evolved into Spanish words (alone among Romance languages) as an 'h'. The reason for this change is still unknown, but it has been ascribed to Basque speakers, as the change was first documented in areas where many Basques were known to live. The theory is that the Basque language did not have an 'f' sound, and so substituted it for the nearest sound in their language, which was 'h'. However, this theory has been disputed.
Of course, I tried to come up with more examples of the 'f' - 'h' phenomenon. Can you think of any more?
hongo -- fungus
halcón - falcon
horno -- furnace
hablar -- fable
higo -- fig
horma - form
(hacer -- facere)
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