We consider an effective theory (ET) approach to flavor-violating processes beyond the standard model, where the breaking of flavor symmetry is described by spurion fields whose low-energy vacuum expectation values are identified with the standard model Yukawa couplings. Insisting on canonical mass dimensions for the spurion fields, the large top-quark Yukawa coupling also implies a large expectation value for the associated spurion, which breaks part of the flavor symmetry already at the UV scale Lambda of the ET. Below that scale, flavor symmetry in the ET is represented in a nonlinear way by introducing Goldstone modes for the partly broken flavor symmetry and spurion fields transforming under the residual symmetry. As a result, the dominance of certain flavor structures in rare quark decays can be understood in terms of the 1/Lambda expansion in the ET.