Latin and Greek Roots of English Vocabulary: An Online Manual: Lesson 2 [corp-/soma-]
November 29, 2009
|
Root
|
Original Meaning/ Usage Notes |
English Derivatives
|
Vocabulary
|
| (base)
corp- [from Latin]
|
(noun) body
|
corporal corporation [literally, ‘an embodiment;’ a body of individuals legally recognized as a separate entity.] corps [literally, ‘a body;’ a group of persons, especially military, united for the accomplishment of a specific purpose.] corpse [literally, ‘(dead) body.’] corpulent corpuscle [literally, ‘little body;’ an unattached body cell.] |
corporal (adjective) [literally, ‘of the body;’ relating to the body; bodily.]
corpulent (adjective) [literally, ‘having an excess of body;’ plump, fat.]
|
| (base)
soma- [from Greek]
|
(noun) body
|
chromosome merosome [literally, ‘part of the body.’] psychosomatic [literally, ‘soul-bodily;’ relating to an illness with physical or bodily symptoms but with a mental or psychological cause; psychogenetic.] somatology [literally, ‘speech about the body;’ the physiological study of the body.] somatoplasm [literally, ‘molded body;’ the total differentiated protoplasm composing the body.] somatotype |
chromosome (noun) [literally, ‘colored body;’ a strand of DNA.]
somatotype (noun) [literally, ‘body outline;’ the body type or body structure of a person.]
|
Latin and Greek Roots of English Vocabulary: An Online Manual: Lesson 1 [ante-/anti-]
November 22, 2009
The passport to successful reading is frequent reading of varied texts. Frequent reading presupposes confidence in one’s reading ability. These weekly lessons on the major Latin and Greek roots of English words are meant to give those who master them that confidence.
Each lesson consists of a chart of a root or pair of related roots together with detailed information about their original function and meaning, a selection of English words derived from each root (with meanings), and a pair of targeted vocabulary words for that root. I leave it up to the individual whether to treat only the targeted vocabulary words as those to be especially memorized or to treat all the words (derivatives and targeted alike) as worthy of personal targeting.
First Lesson
| Root
|
Original Meaning/ Usage Notes
|
English Derivatives
|
Targeted Vocabulary
|
| (prefix)
ante- [from Latin] |
(preposition)
before (either in time or in space) [Note: To avoid confusion with the prefix “anti-,” pronounce this ‘an-tee.’] |
ante [literally, ‘before;’ the money placed down by each poker player before the game begins.] antebellum [literally, ‘before the war,’ especially before the United States Civil War.] antecedent antediluvian ante meridiem (AM) [literally, ‘before midday.’] anteroom [literally, ‘the room before;’ the room in front of the main room, for example, a waiting room.] |
antecedent(noun) [literally, ‘going before;’ the noun whose place a pronoun takes, i.e., the noun that ‘goes-before’ what stands in for it.] antediluvian(adjective) [literally, ‘pertaining to what was before the flood (deluge);’ antiquated and outmoded.] |
| (prefix)
anti- [from Greek] |
(preposition)
against [Note: To avoid confusion with the prefix “ante-,” pronounce this ‘ant-eye.’] |
antagonist Antarctic [literally, ‘against the Arctic; the portion of the earth opposite to the Arctic.] antiaircraft [literally, ‘against aircraft;’ designed to defend against airplanes.] antidote [literally, ‘given against;’ a counteragent for nullifying (fighting against) the harmful effects of something else, especially a poison.] anti-war [literally, ‘against war.’] antipathy |
antagonist(noun) [literally, ‘(the professional) against the (first professional) competitor (or champion);’ the one against the protagonist.] antipathy(noun) [literally, ‘against the affection (of another person or thing);’ strong hatred (toward a person or thing).] |
The Root of the Problem of the Rootlessness of Readers Today: A Statement of Concern and Principles
November 17, 2009
We are no longer a nation of readers. Even worse, we have become a nation that is alienated from the essential cultural equipment that enriched our past.
Consider Sherlock Holmes’s apt remark from A Study in Scarlet: “I consider that a [person’s] brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.” Our current educational system fails because it is designed to leave the attics of our students empty and to make them feel good about living in such bare surroundings.
Consequently, all too few “schooled” individuals today recognize the Shakespearean allusion in the title of works such as William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. This is a radical shift from nineteenth century America where even many relatively unschooled individuals would have recognized the Shakespearean allusion in such mass-market short stories as “A Country Lear.”
More of the books that are assigned to our students are targeted at the vocabulary that they possess already and the lives that they lead in actuality. Assigned readings are chosen decreasingly for their containing horizons and aspirations beyond those of their readers, and they are chosen increasingly for their containing portrayals of lives very much like the lives of their readers. Increasingly, books are chosen, not to inspire students to reach for the stars, but rather to make students feel comfortable with their feet firmly on their home ground.
In elementary schools in particular, learning is no longer considered to be the preparation for adulthood that it once was assumed to be, but rather learning has become a way of quarantining children in some imagined idyllic sanctuary, free from rigor and demand and accountability. The cultivation of empty self-esteem has replaced the historically prior ethic of self-accomplishment.
Therefore, the average students in our public schools—even though they are perhaps the most financially indulged public schools in the world—are less competent learners than average public school students in many impoverished third-world nations.
The root of our difficulty is an educational orthodoxy that has elevated the empty formalism of skills to a preeminent place in the development of curricula. State standards—remarkably uniform from state to state—are so denuded of substantive content that one would be hard-pressed to differentiate between the standards for, say, an American Literature course and those for a British Literature course. Students can complete these courses without even having to remember the name of a single indigenous author or work.
This flaccidity in the teaching of English (or language arts generally) begins in elementary school. Students no longer are taught grammar systematically from first through eighth grade, as we were when I was in elementary school. Students no longer are required or expected to parse or diagram sentences.
Indeed, anything that smacks of “rote” learning, as grammar does, is anathema to today’s educators, who themselves are woefully unknowing of the most basic grammatical phenomena.
In addition, students no longer are required or expected to learn the roots, especially the Latin and Greek roots, of English words, as we were when I was in elementary school. This is damaging, not only to reading with fluidity of comprehension, but also to later performance on all aspects of the English sections of major standardized tests, such as the SAT.
Reading is foundational, not only for competence in the humanities and language arts, but also for competence in mathematics and the natural sciences.
If we do not address our failure to teach the language arts properly, we will continue—as President Bill Clinton has suggested—giving too many high school diplomas to students who cannot read those very diplomas.
Time and again during my teaching career, I had seen students paralyzed in their reading of assigned texts by words—even relatively common ones—that they seemed never to have seen before and whose meaning they were unable even to divine intelligently. I recalled how often my own school-inculcated knowledge—supplemented by later formal language study—of those roots had bailed me successfully out of similar perplexities.
I also knew that well over half of English vocabulary derives from Latin, either directly or indirectly (through the Romance languages, especially French). Furthermore, I had learned in my science courses, both natural science and social science, how much of the terminology was indebted to Greek.
Knowing the roots that are the basis of so many English words enables readers to gain greater reading fluency. Armed with these roots, readers can guess the meanings of unfamiliar words without a feeling of helplessness and without unnecessary dependence upon a dictionary. In this way, reading becomes more fluid, more rewarding, less burdensome, and—most important—less frustrating.
Students, as I have said, used to learn these roots in elementary school. They no longer do.
In addition, those in times past whose foundational reading experiences centered on the King James translation of the Bible mastered these roots—without consciously trying to do so—by mastering and memorizing Biblical passages. The reading of our students today no longer centers on the Bible, and memorizing—whether the Bible or Shakespeare or anything else—has been neglected and disregarded in the decades since the Second World War.
Therefore, I started to draw up a series of lessons that would inculcate in high school students the major Latin and Greek roots of English words based on the hope that this project would improve the reading fluidity of students. While I was at work on these lessons, I realized that these lessons could be adapted comfortably for use in both middle school and elementary school too.
Although I retired before I could complete this mini-curriculum, I have completed it since retiring on the heels of completing my recently published The First Latin Course: An Introductory Latin Grammar for Middle School, High School, and College. I believe that the lessons contained in this mini-curriculum would possess—for those who might wish to use them—a value by filling a gap that stands in the way of student linguistic competence.
Now I had to decide what to do with this mini-curriculum. It occurred to me that I could present them on a weekly basis in my blog as a first tremulous step on a journey that might contribute to the restoration of American educational hegemony and—with it—American political and social hegemony.
It Is Time To Change Time Change
November 11, 2009
Last week, a local DJ (Larry Larson on WMLB, The Voice of the Arts, 1690 AM) solicited comments from listeners about the change from daylight to standard time. Often I had wanted to chime in on this subject, and this gave me the opportunity. Therefore, I wrote the following, which he read on the air:
Your comments about the disorientation attendant upon the change from daylight to standard time (which apply to the reverse too) are apt and accurate. It is like jet lag, but with the added discomfort that it occurs within a milieu to which we look for comfort and stability, namely our own home and its immediate environs. After looking at the time in the ‘adjustment phase’, the number of times that one says to oneself (or to others), “It is actually…”, are too numerous to count.
However, the solution is not to retain standard time all the time. Instead, we should remain on what is now called daylight savings time–all these measurements are conventional and arbitrary–all the time. The desirability of the ‘extra’ daylight in the evening outweighs all other considerations.
So, our mantra should be “Daylight Savings Time All the Time!” Who wants to be standard, anyway? And let us give our time a new name, perhaps “Perceived Illumination Extension System (PIES).” I, for one, will take a piece of those pies.
