The Study of Latin Roots Can Help Students

When I was in High School I elected to take was Latin. I really liked the class, but I had the class very late in the day and it was right after physical education. I was often late to class and the teacher was not tolerant about my lateness. I was not that physical then or now and so I tended to be in the last group around the track on the way back in to school, then of course you had to take a shower put on your regular clothes and race to your locker and then finally to class.

I distinctly remember reading the stories in Latin and found them really interesting. Even today I find it interesting how you can really like something and still not do all the well in it even with a fairly good amount of effort. I ended up with a "D" in Latin I, but needed two years of a language and was forced to take Latin I a second time. I still liked it and naturally it was a lot easier the second time. When I started to take more advanced classes in biology later in college it was nice to have had the experience of taking Latin I and Latin II. It was really good at helping understand the Genus and species names of animals and plants.

For example the Latin root "anima" means mind, spirit, soul; the root aqu(a) means water; the root "bi" means two. In biology class you may remember that we then have biology terms like "bivalve", "binocular", and even "bi-sexual". In the field of geology root terms like: "geo" means earth; "litho" means rock; "super" which means above or in the highest degree.

The scientific name for man is "Homo sapiens" (The genus name is "Homo" and the species name is "sapiens") which translates into English from Latin as the "the same and wise". This means in relation to biology that all mankind is basically the same and because this is a Genus name it means that we can interbreed. Although the sapiens part of this scientific name means "wise" we may at times wonder how wise we really are in our daily lives. Students will get hung up on the "Homo" part of this and especially at the junior high or high school level sometimes ask, but always wonder how this relates to "homosexual". I tell them that it means "same" and in the case of sex it means same sex. Usually I then talk about milk of which there is homogenized and pasteurized. I explain that the "Homo" in homogenized refers to the concept that the milk is virtually the same from the top of the milk container to the bottom of the milk container and that the process of pasteurization is designed to kill bacteria.

To be more precise milk has fatty materials in it that will clump together and float to the surface of the milk container, This fatty material is what can be turned into butter and cream. Today we do not get milk that will have fatty globules rise to the top because much of the fatty material has been skimmed off (hence the name skinned milk) and it has been "homogenized" which means it has been mixed so well that the fat globules that are left will not group together, so the milk will stay the same from the top to the bottom. I tell the students "Don't go home and pass the Homo milk because it may not sound proper.", but they are likely to try to get a reaction from their parents. The Latin root word "Homo" means same and has meaning other than some sexual term.

The study of Latin root words gives students a means to uncover the meaning of new words that may use Latin roots. This can be a powerful strategy for future reading and testing. Some words in English come from roots in Greek and some from other languages also. In some cases root words are combined from two words or roots. For example "bicycle", "bifocal", "binoculars" etc.

I had a rather large number of stuffed toy animals in the classroom and had students select one from the group and then they had to give the animal a common name and a scientific name that they made from a list of Latin and Greek roots. Students had a great time and even made up stories about their animals and made a list of characteristics. I passed out a set of Latin and Greek root word lists for the students to use during this exercise.