Tag Archives: foreign languages/linguistics

Moving right along on a cool and cloudy Thursday morning in Brooklyn, here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots prot– and proto. It means primitive and first, which helps me understand how we end up, in English, with prototype. Protagonist, however, mystifies me a bit; I suppose because the protagonist is the primary (i.e. first) actor in a situation, the word sensibly springs from prot.

Anyway, this document includes several other words that spring from this productive root, including such scientific words as protoplast, protozoan, proton, and protozoology.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

OK, if you can use it, here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots vers and vert. They mean turn. So you probably won’t be surprised to hear that these roots turn up in commonly used English words such as adverse, divert, extrovert, and revert, since all involve a turning of some sort. I think a nifty assessment for this worksheet would be to ask students if they can think of any words that spring from this root–e.g. reverse, obverse, subvert, etc–that are not included in the worksheet.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Moving right along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root verb. As you probably infer, this root simply means word. You’ll find this root at the base of just about any word in English related to language, for example (and all on this worksheet), adverb, proverb, verbalize, and verbatim.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Here is a on the Greek word roots tele, tel, and telo. They mean distant, end, and complete. You’ll find this root, somewhat abstractly, at the basis of words like telegenic, telegraph and telegram (mostly obsolete nouns now, I suppose), and telemetry, all of which are included on this worksheet–which means, if the author of the book from which this work is drawn remains correct, these words are likely to show up on the SAT.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.