Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
kazbates:
The best thing that ever happened to my spelling and vocabulary was when my Grandmother decided I should learn about Latin, Greek, and Germanic/Anglo-Saxon root-words, their spellings and their meanings. If you can identify those and conjugate them (is conjugate really the word I'm looking for?) you can figure your way through most of English quite nicely.
Of course it doesn't help with the words that are borrowed from other languages, made up, or otherwise odd. But it does cover a surprising fraction of the words you need, while giving them a unified framework.
Xenophon
|
TOTALLY agree, Xenophon. Knowledge of Latin, especially, is amazingly useful in understanding the meaning of words, since most "complicated" English words have a Latin origin. Sometimes, of course, we get words via multiple routes - eg "royal" from Latin via French, compared to "regal" direct from Latin.
To answer your question: one "conjugates" verbs and "declines" nouns.