Lesson 15. Roots: Seeing and Communicating
English is based on Anglo-Saxon with strong influences from Latin, because Latin was the language of the Romans, who conquered Britain. English has borrowed many words or parts of words. These influences and borrowings help explain why we often have several different words that have very similar meanings. In this sense, our language is an extremely rich one.
Roots have been mentioned in previous lessons as the "core" of a word. The root of a word is its heart, before the addition of a prefix to the beginning or a suffix to the end of the word.
You will see that some roots have more than one form, and the differences are reflected in our English words as well. Commit and commission are related words: Commit is the verb (as in "to commit a crime") and commission is the noun (as in "commission of a crime"). Transmit and transmission, permit and permission, all have the same root meaning "to send." The spelling of the root changes from-mit- to -mis- for some words.
Remember that our language has gone through many changes, and often we recognize the root, prefixes, and suffixes, but still the meaning of the term as it is used today is not clear. (The history of words and the changes they have undergone take up an entire branch of study known as etymology.) Nonetheless, familiarity with Latin and Greek roots, as well as with prefixes and suffixes, will provide you with a significant advantage when determining the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases.
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