Why is Etymology Useful?

GOAL!

EVEN EVEN MORE!!!

• Helps with creating new words and naming new ideas
• Helps with word games or puzzles
• Understanding reasons for slightly different meanings among dialects
• Opens people up to other cultures and languages

EVEN MORE!!!

• A new way of learning vocabulary (old methods of studying can be overused and stop working)
• Helps learn a foreign language (because many languages in the same language family share their etymology)
• Memory, language skills, and vocabulary are improved

MORE!!!

• The history of words and their pronunciations can help predict how words that are currently used will be pronounced.
• Etymology helps with communication across non-physical language barriers.
• Etymology helps with inter-changeable cognates.

How Etymology Helps with English and Vocabulary (Part III)

• Helps people naturally interpret words they have not seen or heard before
• Knowing etymology helps understand the usage of a word better by knowing how it was commonly used and what the word literally means
• After learning and knowing most roots, suffixes, and prefixes, one can guess the meanings of words
• Helps memorize new words easier since the etymology is already known. After the etymology is learned, one only needs to link the word to the definition with the etymology

Why is Etymology Useful?

(no, really!!!)

How Etymology Helps With English and Vocabulary

(Part II)

• Understanding English roots also helps you understand older English texts, which typically incorporate unfamiliar words. (e.g. Shakespeare)
• Etymology also makes you a better writer, since it increases your vocabulary and makes you more linguistically aware.

How Etymology Helps With English and Vocabulary

(Part I)

• Word origins give insight about how English works.

- i.e. How roots combine to form words and word

meanings.

- i.e. There is logic behind words. They're not just

random sounds and spellings!

• Knowing what the roots of words mean decreases the need for tedious vocabulary memorization.

- i.e. You will be able to deduce the meaning of an

unfamiliar word just by knowing its roots!

• Since English has commonalities with other languages, understanding English roots exposes you to other languages that English is similar to.

How Etymology Helps With History

• Knowing Etymology can aid you in determining the approximate origin of the word. It can help in finding out which areas influenced others.
• People can learn prefixes, roots, and suffixes, and after linking words' meanings to their roots, prefixes, or suffixes, they can find what the words originally meant.
• Etymology is a form of history: by learning certain changes within evolution of a language, history can be more easily remembered by finding a correlation.

Aileen Chen

Nancy Yuan

Alannah Criswell

What is Etymology?

• Etymology concerns the history, origins, and evolution of languages.
• Etymologists use various techniques to infer connections between current languages and their ancient roots. This can be especially helpful with large, complex language families like the Indo-European, which includes numerous branches that include many individual languages.
• People have been tracing languages and language relationships as early as the 18th century.