Hi, this is Emily with U.S. English with Emily, and today's lesson is talking
about roots. Now, we're not talking about the roots of a tree or some sort of a
plant. We're talking about roots in the English language. We will not have time
to discuss affixes which are prefixes and suffixes, and these are often
accompanied in lessons about roots. But we're talking just roots today. So what
is a root? The root of the word is the simplest part of a word. The root holds a
key to the word's meaning. If I know what the root means, I have a better chance of
figuring out what the word means. Our first example is from the Greek and it's
geo. Geo in the Greek means earth. Now, here's a couple more examples. Geo -graphy
makes geography geo-thermic makes geothermic. So you can see in the
brackets, this is the root geo as it's used in other words. Now, more
specifically geography has two roots within that one particular word. Geo
meaning earth and graph meaning to write, record, or draw, so you combine together
two roots with these separate meanings so to write record or draw about the
earth and we get geography. We also have an additional root that could mean Earth.
One is from the Greek and one is from the Latin, so geo from the Greek and terr
from the Latin both of which mean earth. As if the English language couldn't get any
more confusing, you have multiple roots that mean the same thing!
Combining those roots together we can figure out that these words in some
way or in their origin had to do with earth.
We have geode, extraterrestrial, terra cotta, geocentric, and terrace. All of
those words, then if you understand the root, you understand in some way they
are related to earth. Because geo and terr mean earth. This is Emily with US English
tips with Emily. Have a great day!
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