Vox Latina 2019-2020 Vox Latina Fall 2019 | Page 21

Fall Issue, 2019
...can help you memorize
and decipher the meanings ...helps with spelling
of unknown words
The English language is one of the
hardest languages in terms of
If you study more advanced science
spelling! Sometimes it seems like
and law, you’ll often see really
there are just as many exceptions as
technical words in their jargon that
there are rules. This is due to the
aren’t really used in common speech!
sheer amount of words that come
Often times, however, these words
from foreign languages, which each
will use Latin or Greek roots, and you
have their own separate rules for
sometimes can piece together the
spelling! If you want to improve your
definition of a word based on its
spelling skills, it helps to know a few
roots. For example, the androecium
word roots. For instance, you might
and gynoecium of a flower describe
have trouble remembering that first p
its reproductive structures. How can
in pneumonia. “Why does the p exist
you remember their functions, and
if we don’t even pronounce it?”
how can you differentiate between
wondered all of us. The answer to
the two? If you know the prefixes
that question lies in its etymology:
andr- and gyn- come from the Greek
pneumonia comes from the Greek
words for man and woman
noun pneumōn, meaning lung. This
(respectively), and that -oecium
makes sense, given that pneumonia
comes from the Greek noun oikion
is an inflammation of the lungs. Once
meaning house, it’s much easier to
you know pneumonia’s Greek root,
associate the androecium for male
it’s much easier to remember its
reproductive structures, and the
initial p!
gynoecium for female ones!
...helps with vocabulary (both English Latin Greek!)
If you study word roots without knowing the definition of the root, then
etymology will seem like much more memorization than it actually is.
Knowing classical vocabulary provides context for the derivative you’re
studying. For example, you might be studying the word pugnacious, which
comes from the Latin verb pugnō. If you stop there, you’ll just be connecting
a random Latin verb with a random English adjective. It’s much more
rewarding to know that pugnō means to fight. Similarly, if you just blindly
memorize that gregarious, egregious, and aggregate all come from the Latin
noun grex (meaning flock), you might confuse their definitions! However, if
you also learn that gregarious means sociable, egregious means shockingly
bad, and aggregate means combining several elements into a whole, then
you’ll get much more out of your studies.
21