2.2 The Words in Every Science — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read twelve Greek endings and say what each one means. Build an English word from a Greek root and one of the endings, and be right about what it means. Read a medical or scientific term in Greek and work out the English equivalent from the parts. Read eight sentences in which the words are built from the endings on the list. Prerequisites : 2.1 — transliteration. Read 2.1 Cognates first if you have not. What you already know You have never studied Greek and you can already say, with confidence, that a word ending in -itis names an inflammation, that one ending in -ology names a field of study and that one ending in -scope names something you look through. That knowledge did not come from Greek lessons. It came from meeting the words, and it is worth more than it sounds: it means the hard part of this lesson is already done, and what is left is to see the endings in their original spelling. The reason so much of English works this way is historical. When European scientists needed names for new things from the seventeenth century onwards, they built them out of Greek and Latin rather than out of their own languages, because those languages were the common property of educated Europe. Greek supplied most of the vocabulary of medicine, biology and physics; the practice continues, which is why words coined last year are still made of these pieces. The rule Twelve endings. The fourth column gives a modern Greek word that uses the ending, where this course's corpus has one; a dash means the ending is common in English but rare as a word in everyday Greek. Ending Meaning English words In Greek λογία the study of biology · geology · psychology · archaeology · technology τεχνολογία — technología γραφία writing, recording photography · geography · biography · calligraphy · choreography φωτογραφία — fotografía νομία the ordering, the law of economy · astronomy · autonomy · agronomy · taxonomy οικονομία — ikonomía κρατία rule, power democracy · aristocracy · bureaucracy · meritocracy · theocracy δημοκρατία — dimokratía σκόπιο an instrument for looking microscope · telescope · periscope · stethoscope · horoscope μικροσκόπιο — mikroskópio ίτιδα inflammation of arthritis · bronchitis · hepatitis · dermatitis · meningitis φλεβίτιδα — flevítida φοβία fear of claustrophobia · agoraphobia · arachnophobia · xenophobia · hydrophobia — θεραπεία treatment, healing physiotherapy · chemotherapy · psychotherapy · hydrotherapy · radiotherapy θεραπεία — therapía μετρία measurement of geometry · symmetry · trigonometry · optometry · telemetry — λόγος one who studies biologist · geologist · archaeologist · psychologist · seismologist βιολόγος — viológos γράφος one who writes, a writer photographer · biographer · stenographer · cartographer · journalist δημοσιογράφος — dimosiográfos μανία obsession with kleptomania · megalomania · pyromania · bibliomania · mania μανία — manía Two of these are worth separating carefully, because they differ by one letter and name different things. The ending for a field of study and the ending for the person who studies it are built on the same root — the first names the account, the second names the one who gives it. So the study of life and the person who studies life differ in Greek exactly as biology and biologist differ in English, and the Greek pair is the model the English pair was copied from. The same is true of the pair for writing. One names the activity or the product; the other names the writer. A Greek newspaper's masthead uses the second, and so does the English word for the trade, which came through French. Building words Once the endings are yours, the roots do the rest. Take the root for the earth and add the ending for writing: you get the word for geography, which is literally earth-writing . Add the ending for the study of instead, and you get geology, earth-study . Add the ending for measurement and you get geometry, earth-measurement — which is what it originally was, before it became abstract. This is not a memory trick. It is the actual construction of the words, and it means that meeting a new one costs you nothing: speleology is the study of caves, oology the study of eggs, dendrology the study of trees, and you have just learned three words you may never have met without opening a dictionary. One caution before the sentences. A Greek speaker does not hear these words as assemblies of parts any more than an English speaker hears breakfast as breaking a fast. The word for the police is simply the word for the police; nobody in Athens is thinking about the ordering of the city. The analysis is a tool for a learner, not a description of what the word feels like from inside the language, and you should let it fall away as the words become familiar. A second caution concerns the endings that have no Greek word in the fourth column. Those endings are alive in English and rare in everyday Greek — the fear ending in particular is a nineteenth-century English habit, applied to Greek roots by doctors writing in Latin. So a word like arachnophobia is built out of Greek pieces but has never been an ordinary Greek word, and a Greek speaker meeting it would parse it exactly as you do. Vocabulary made of Greek is not the same thing as Greek vocabulary. Read it aloud Eight sentences. Each one contains a word built from an ending on the list; the right-hand column names the parts. Greek English What the parts mean Δεν έχω φωτογραφία της. [1] I don't have a picture of her. the photograph: light plus writing Διδάσκω Γεωγραφία. [2] I teach geography. geography: the earth plus writing Τηλεφωνήστε την αστυνομία! [3] Call the police! the police: the city plus its ordering Το εμπόριο βοηθά την οικονομία μας. [4] Commerce helps our economy. the economy: the household plus its ordering Αυτό είναι δημοκρατία, νομίζω. [5] This is democracy, I think. democracy: the people plus power Μ' αρέσει η αστρολογία. [6] I like astrology. astrology: the stars plus the s