// BLOG
Stop the Texification of Our Texts!
March 11, 2010
Texas may not be seceding from the union politically, but it is doing everything that it can to do so educationally. As the New York Times’s James McKinley reported (www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/us/politics/11texas.html?ref=education), just as the nation is at last on the cusp of crafting something like uniform national curriculum standards, the Texas State Board of Education is revising its social studies curriculum to tilt it in an extremist right wing direction, elevating Jefferson Davis to a stature equal to Abraham Lincoln, watering down the New Deal and the Great society and civil rights history, elevating the groundless claim of the centrality of Christianity in the founding of the republic, even mentioning the Tea Party movement as legitimate, to name just a few.
Why is this important? It is important because the sheer size of Texas makes it one of the prime purchasers of textbooks in the nation. Consequently, when Texas speaks, textbook publishers listen. This could lead to a decade of textbooks skewed to a malformed rightist view of our civil life and history.
It is time for publishers to stand firm and to act in a principled way to resist the textbook bullying of Texas.
The national standards being formulated may not be all that some of us would wish in the way of rigor and comprehensiveness and coherence, but they will be preferable to anything that the Texan right wingers can cook up.
Stop the Texification of our texts!
Our Latinate Political Scene (A Political Vocabulary Exercise)
March 8, 2010
Students of politics should refresh the Latin that they learned in high school, because it would provide them with some insight into our current universe of political discourse and action.
The Republic Party is the “ob” party, the party of the Latin preposition “ob,” which means “against/regarding.” This preposition conveys a sense of in-your-face againstness. Two English nouns that have this as a root are: obstacle and obloquy. The English adjectives derived from it include: obdurate, obfuscatory, objectionable, objurgating, obliterative, oblivious, obnoxious, obscene, obscurantist, obsequious, obsessive, obsolescent, obstinate, obstreperous, obstructionist, obtrusive, obtundent, obturating, and obtuse.
The Democratic Party is the “si” party, the party of the Latin conjunction “si,” which means “if.” The iffiness of the Democratic Party has made it seem like a cadre of temporizing bumblers, the party of unfulfilled conditionality. Some of its mottoes could be: “if we had the courage of our convictions,” “if we had the principled certainty to act decisively,” or “if we valued the truth enough to confront proliferated lies directly.”
This is only the tip of the iceberg of what Latin has to teach us about our current political stagnation.
Latin and Greek Roots of English Vocabulary: An Online Manual: Lesson 16 [dic-/dict-]
March 7, 2010
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Root
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Original Meaning/ Usage Notes |
English Derivatives
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Vocabulary
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(base) dic-/dict- [from Latin]
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(verb) to say
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benediction dictator diction [literally, ‘saying;’ the choice and use of words in speaking or in writing.] edict [literally, ‘said out;’ a legally binding decree or proclamation or pronouncement.] to indict [literally, ‘to say unto;’ to accuse someone formally of wrongdoing or crime.] malediction [literally, ‘badly-saying;’ a curse.] |
benediction (noun) [literally, ‘well-saying;’ a blessing.] dictator (noun) [literally, ‘official sayer;’ an ancient Roman leader designated to lead the city temporarily in a crisis; an absolute or autocratic ruler.] |
Latin and Greek Roots of English Vocabulary: An Online Manual: Lesson 15 [cred-]
February 28, 2010
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Root
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Original Meaning/ Usage Notes |
English Derivatives
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Vocabulary
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| (base)
cred- [from Latin]
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(verb) to believe(-in)
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credential [literally, ‘(evidence) pertaining to believing;’ anything that certifies that one’s declared claim or position is to be believed.] credible creditable [literally, ‘able to be believed;’ deserving of belief.] credo [literally, ‘I believe;’ an official statement of religious belief; a creed.] credulous to discredit [literally, ‘to believe apart;’ to destroy belief in, or refuse belief to, someone or something.] |
credible (adjective) [literally, ‘believable;’ conveying worthiness or likeliness to be believed.] credulous (adjective) [literally, ‘believing;’ too prone or ready to believe; gullible.] |
Latin and Greek Roots of English Vocabulary: An Online Manual: Lesson 14 [con-/com-/co-; syn-/sym-/syl-/sy-/sys-]
February 21, 2010
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Root
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Original Meaning/ Usage Notes |
English Derivatives
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Vocabulary
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| (prefix)
con-/com-/co- [from Latin]
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(preposition) with [Note: As a prefix, this also means ‘together.’] |
colloquial concrescence [literally, ‘growing together;’ the conjoint growing of different parts of a biological organism.] congregation [literally, ‘a flocking together;’ a group of persons assembled for a specific purpose, especially for religious worship.] consensus convention [literally, ‘a coming together;’ a formal meeting of an organization; an agreed upon usage or belief.] to convert [literally, ‘to turn together with;’ to change something into something else; to convince someone to adopt a particular belief, especially a religion.] |
colloquial (adjective) [literally, ‘pertaining to speaking together with (someone else);’ characteristic of spoken language or informal writing that is meant to imitate ordinary conversation.] consensus (noun) [literally, ‘a sensing together;’ an agreement reached by a group either unanimously (consensus omnium) or by a majority (consensus gentium).] |
| (prefix)
syn-/sym-/syl-/sy-/sys- [from Greek]
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(preposition) with [Note: As a prefix, this also means ‘together.’]
|
sympathy [literally, ‘suffering together with;’ sharing the feelings of someone else; compassion.] symphony [literally, ‘sound together;’ a long musical composition in three or more movements for a large orchestra.] synergy [literally, ‘working together with;’ the interaction of two or more actors or forces so that their combined effect is bigger than the sum of their individual effects; cooperative interaction between groups.] synonym [literally, ‘name together with;’ a word with the same, or almost the same, meaning as another word in the same language.] syntax synthesis |
syntax (noun) [literally, ‘ordering together;’ the rules governing the combining of words into grammatically correct clauses and sentences; the rules of linguistic coordination.]
synthesis (noun) [literally, ‘a putting together;’ the combining of disparate elements or phenomena into an organized and integrated whole; compositing.] |
