This is language dependent. For learning Chinese, recognizing radicals (like waht represents water, and what represents tree) can go a long way in helping recall of both meaning and pronunciation. Then moving on to learning Korean, where Chinese characters make up ~25% of Korean words, recognizing the Chinese character, then recognizing the typical phonetic alterations to Chinese pronunciations, can go a long way in helping recall of both meaning and pronunciation.
I am still skeptical. One thing is to recognize common roots, for example "to live" is "vivere" in Italian and "vivir" in Spanish, another it is to know that they are both coming from the latin verb vīvĕre.
It is sufficient to recognize the commonality, without getting to the etymology of the word, which, in practical term, does not help.
