When present, progress, record, and rebel are verbs, the stress is on the root and the vowel in the first syllable is long.

Look at these noun and verb combinations of Latin words ( Figure 3). If you can’t remember what the muffled vowel is in dem uh crat, you canhear that the vowel is o in de moc ra cy. There is nothing like this in the English side of English.īy the way, one way to help students spell these Latin words where the interior vowel is muffled is to try another form of the word. In the first two words, the o has the schwa uh sound, but in the last word o is in the accented syllable, and you can now hear the short o sound. Look at the shifting accent on these three Latin words and the vowel o that changes its sound. Here are some Latin words that illustrate the Latin style of spelling and pronunciation: Here’s another example ( Figure 2): The young student has learned the English word for death, but how does that prepare him for these abstract words that come from the Latin word for death, mors, mortis? How do we teach these Latin words masquerading as English? We don’t. Do you know the meaning of paternalism, expatriate, and patronize? How do we prepare students for these words? We don’t. Here’s the problem. The child has learned the English word for father, but then as he progresses through school he meets a whole new set of words: 3-5 syllable, difficult, abstract words that come from the Latin word for father, pater, patris( Figure 1). 2.) Half of our English vocabulary is made up of Latin words and roots. And the only truly systematic way to continue the study of the English language after phonics is to teach Latin-the foundation of the Latin half of English. How do we teach the Latin half of English in a systematic orderly way like we do phonics? We don’t. Latin words are bigger, harder, have more syllables, more abstract meanings, and different pronunciation and spelling patterns. English is a Germanic language and, the Germans being barbarians, had mostly concrete, common, everyday words, the words children learn to speak and read first in primary school.īut, beginning in 3rd grade, students start to encounter the Latin half of English. The name English comes from the Angles who, along with the Saxons and other barbarians, invaded Britain after the fall of Rome in the 5th century. But then we stop, even though there is another half of English that has a whole new set of root words, spelling, and pronunciation patterns.Įnglish, you see, is a hybrid language, a marriage of two languages-English and Latin. But phonics only covers half of our language, the English half, those good old concrete words that students learn to speak and read first.

We all understand the importance of phonics, the systematic study of the English letters and their sounds. 1.) Latin is the next step after phonics. While we agree the study of Spanish is a very good thing, what I propose to show you here is that there is no subject most useful, more practical, and more valuable than Latin. In this day of computers, and the triumph of science and technology, when there is so much to learn and so little time, why study a dead language? Why not study something practical and useful? Like Spanish, for instance.

Whatever it takes in latin