Daily Log

Tuesday, September 22

Language Lesson

Starting from the SAT Question of the Day, we used the dictionary to explore both word meanings and word origins (etymology). Why are there so many words with Latin roots in the English language? Mr. P. presented a brief historical explanation (including the importance of Latin in the English church and in European scholarship and the massive infusion of Latinate words at the the time of the Norman Conquest). We next explored the deeper history of both English and Latin by examining the chart of the Indo-European language family found in the back of the American Heritage Dictionary (our classroom dictionaries).