1.1 You Already Know Thousands of Latin Words — Epoché
What you will be able to do Say roughly what share of your English vocabulary came from Latin, and where the figure comes from. Go from a Latin word to an English word that contains it, for sixty words. Go the other way: from an English word, guess the Latin one and be right more often than not. Name the one thing this shortcut does not give you, and where the course deals with it. Read sentences like Nōn hodiē! [24] — Not today! — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : 0.6 — the reading-aloud gate. This is the lesson that makes Latin worth starting. Every other language in this library asks you to build a vocabulary from nothing. Latin does not: you are carrying several thousand Latin words already, and this volume spends six lessons counting them and turning them into something you can use on purpose. The counting is not a pep talk. It is a measurement, and the number changes what the rest of the course has to do. What you already know The classic estimate is that something between a quarter and a third of ordinary English words come from Latin, directly or through French, and that in technical and academic registers the share rises well past half. You can check the direction of that claim on yourself, without trusting anybody, in about a minute. Read down the left column and cover the right one. Latin English words built on it aqua water aquatic, aquarium, aqueduct, aquamarine terra earth, land terrain, territory, terrestrial, subterranean manus hand manual, manuscript, manufacture, manipulate pēs foot ( pedis ) pedal, pedestrian, impede, pedestal caput head ( capitis ) capital, captain, decapitate, per capita corpus body ( corporis ) corporate, corpse, corporeal, corps annus year annual, anniversary, biennial, perennial nox night ( noctis ) nocturnal, nocturne, equinox lūx light ( lūcis ) lucid, elucidate, translucent, Lucifer vōx voice ( vōcis ) vocal, vocation, advocate, univocal liber book library, libel, libretto urbs city ( urbis ) urban, suburb, urbane bellum war belligerent, rebel, antebellum pāx peace ( pācis ) pacify, pacific, appease rēx king ( rēgis ) regal, regent, regicide, royal lēx law ( lēgis ) legal, legislate, legitimate, privilege tempus time ( temporis ) temporal, temporary, contemporary, tempo mors death ( mortis ) mortal, mortgage, mortify, post mortem vīta life vital, vitamin, vivid, revitalise nātūra nature natural, nation, native, innate Twenty Latin words, about eighty English ones, and you needed no help with any of them. Notice what the right-hand column has in common: the words are mostly long , mostly learned , and mostly the ones you would use in writing rather than in conversation. That is the shape of the Latin layer in English, and it is why Latin pays off faster in reading than in speech. The rule Now make it usable. There are two directions, and they are not equally easy. Latin to English is reliable, and you have just done it twenty times. Take the Latin word, look for the stem, and ask what English word has that stem in it. If you find one, you have a hook for the meaning — not the meaning itself, but a hook. English to Latin is the direction that pays during a reading. It needs one extra step, because the English word is usually built on an oblique stem rather than on the dictionary form. Look again at four rows above: English word Stem it shows Latin dictionary form pedal ped- pēs capital capit- caput corporate corpor- corpus nocturnal noct- nox In every case the English word preserves the form the Latin word takes when it is not the subject of its sentence. That is not an accident. English borrowed most of these words from the Latin accusative or from the oblique stem, because that is the form that appeared most often in the texts being read. So the practical rule is: When you meet a Latin noun of the third declension, look for the English cognate in its genitive rather than its nominative. That is why dictionaries print the genitive beside the headword, and why this course does the same in every word list. The genitive is not extra clutter: it is the form that connects the word to what you already know. One more piece of the rule, and it is the one that saves the most time. English very often holds two descendants of one Latin word: an early one borrowed through French, worn down and ordinary, and a later one taken straight from Latin, long and learned. Latin Through French Straight from Latin rēx , rēgis royal regal frangere to break frail fragile sēcūrus safe sure secure factum a deed feat fact grātia favour grace gratis, gratitude pauper poor poor pauper When you meet such a pair, the learned member is almost always closer to the Latin meaning, and the ordinary one has drifted. Frail and fragile both descend from "breakable", but only fragile still says so. What the shortcut does not give you Here is the honest accounting, and it is the reason this course is built the way it is. The shortcut gives you vocabulary . It gives you nothing at all about form . Look at a single Latin sentence and ask yourself what you can do with it: Latin English Haec domus mea est. [1] This house is mine. You know domus from domestic . You can guess mea from my . But nothing in your English vocabulary tells you why it is haec and not hic , why mea and not meus , or what would change if the sentence were about two houses. Those are endings, and English shed almost all of its own a long time ago. You have about a dozen left — he/him/his , who/whom , -s for plurals — where Latin has several hundred. So the design of this course follows directly from the measurement. Because the vocabulary is half bought, we spend six lessons collecting it systematically and then thirty lessons on morphology , across the first two phases, which is far more than a course for a speaker of a related language would need. And because English cognates carry meanings that have drifted, the last lesson of this volume is entirely about words where trusting the English will lead you wr