Should Etymology be a school subject?

Would it benefit Children to teach Etymology?

  • Yes, But only words of Latin origin

    Votes: 1 7.1%

  • Yes, but only Latin and Greek words

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Yes. Teach them a little of every language

    Votes: 8 57.1%

  • No. That's Stupid (from L.Stupidus, amazed)

    Votes: 2 14.3%

  • No. It would make children too intelligent.

    Votes: 4 28.6%
  • Total voters
    14
Captain Kremmen

Captain Kremmen

All aboard, me Hearties!
Valued Senior Member
Etymology, Def:
1. The origin and historical development of a linguistic form as shown by determining its basic elements, earliest known use, and changes in form and meaning, tracing its transmission from one language to another, identifying its cognates in other languages, and reconstructing its ancestral form where possible.
2. The branch of linguistics that deals with etymology

The little I know of etymology I gained in the study of Latin at school.
I wasn't very good at the language, but I always loved the way words in this old language had found new life in English.
I wish I had studied Etymology as a subject, because then I would have had knowledge of how Greek, French, Indian, and other languages impacted on the words that we use.

Why isn't it a school subject?
 
Hmm, it probably should be a subject. But more as an extra thing.

I guess it's not a subject because it isn't that 'important'. There's no job nor carrier where you'll be needing this.
But, I'd bet if you look around, you'll find some special school with Etymology.
It's very interesting and something you definitely should look up.
 
This is a really popular topic.
I wonder if I can still add a poll?

Yes! Get voting everybody. You too Toxichazard.
 
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Thanks for joining this very small group Walter.
Were you taught Latin or Greek at school?


I do believe that young people are becoming more intellectually stupid, and that this would help them.
I think it gives you precision in the words you use, and more understanding of what they mean.
It gives weight to the words.
I bet if you did an analysis of the words I use, there is a deficit of Greek words which would do the job better.
 
4 U 2 c or 4 me 2 b? This new form of words is something that confounds me as I can't keep up with many of the new variations that words are being shortened into.:(
 
Captain Kremmen said:
Thanks for joining this very small group Walter.
Were you taught Latin or Greek at school?


I do believe that young people are becoming more intellectually stupid, and that this would help them.
I think it gives you precision in the words you use, and more understanding of what they mean.
It gives weight to the words.
I bet if you did an analysis of the words I use, there is a deficit of Greek words which would do the job better.
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I studied Latin for two years in HS, and German for three years. I found Latin helped me immensely in learning the origin and meaning of english words with underlying Latin origins; and the Latin grammar helped immensely with learning German grammar (I had no clue about cases and case-endings until studying Latin).
 
Ophiolite said:
I'm fairly sure it was taught as part of routine English class when I was at school. Of course we were all writing in cuneiform then and Polaris wasn't the pole star.
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Yup, English was four classes a week - reading writing grammar and composition. We learned about weird stuff like gerunds and had special books where you touched lines on the top and bottom while writing entire pages in cursive
 
We did that writing too.
With scratchy pens you had to dip into ink.
I bet you didn't make your own ink to write with.
We did. Out of powder.
 
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As I have bitterly lamented before, even though my mother was raised speaking Bohemian (we call it "Czech" today because it's easier to spell and pronounce) she studiously avoided teaching it to me. So I grew up monolingual, haunted by many unformed and unanswered questions about the weird sounds I overheard when she was talking with her relatives in the next room. (And if you've ever heard Czech you know I really mean "weird." ;))

I was never introduced to the idea of word origins in school--or the evolution of language at all. Fortunately Spanish was a required course in the 7th grade in Arizona 55 years ago so some new synapses were cultivated in my brain and I began to notice the similarities between words in English and Spanish. But it wasn't until high school, when I continued Spanish and hung around with friends who were studying French, German, Latin and Russian, that the whole concept of linguistics entered my head. I was so enchanted by it that I scoured the public library and learned things my teachers didn't know. By my junior year I had founded the high school linguistics club and I knew the Latin, Greek and Germanic roots of a good many of the words in a high-schooler's vocabulary.

Unfortunately etymology is still not something most people are conscious of, even people who should be. An anecdote has been floating around for years--and I have no doubt that it's still current--about a girl who had studied French and then transferred to a Catholic school where she was enrolled in a Latin class. She was having a miserable time of it. She couldn't remember simple words like manus, canis, noctem (hand, dog, night, and please forgive my atrocious grammar). Her teacher kept saying, "But you already know these words in French: main, chien, nuit." The girl looked up in total bewilderment and asked, "Are you trying to tell me that there's some relationship between French and Latin???"

I voted for Option 3, even though I think that's too ambitious a goal, because it was the closest to my own opinion. I believe every child should be taught a second language as early as possible. It's generally recognized that language learning ability attenuates with age so ideally the child should be taught two languages from birth. In my day this was thought to be a handicap and that opinion was reinforced by the intense xenophobia of post-WWII America, but today many educators regard it as an advantage.

My own point of view is that every language comes with its own way of perceiving and thinking about the world. Since most of our higher-level thoughts are formed in words, it stands to reason that the language we speak shapes the way we think. Having two languages up there allows us to reality-test the thoughts in one language against the paradigms of the other.
 
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Etymology would definitely enliven kids' English classes and give meaning to language -- similar to researching one's ancestors.

My English class taught dreary names of things (eg, "past pluperfect tense", "subjunctive clause", etc), which, not amazingly, are only used in English classes. I worked as a technical document writer and editor for a few years and, even then, I never used those names of things.
 
I think that instead of etymology, there should be more of an emphasis on the study of modern foreign languages. These are infinitely more useful and, certainly in the UK where I live, not taught as much as they should be.
 
In what way?
Should people learn to be conversant in a number of languages, or concentrate on one?
 
Captain Kremmen said:
In what way?
Should people learn to be conversant in a number of languages, or concentrate on one?
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I think we should be taught at least one of the main European languages from primary school, and it should be compulsory until we are 16. At my school, for example, most people learnt French (and about 6 months of German alongside) between the ages of 11 and 14. The little you do learn is soon forgotten, so it's a bit of a waste of time really. As for the methods of teaching, I think there should be more emphasis on spoken communication instead of the thoroughly exam-orientated listening exercises and comprehension of articles that we have at the moment.

All that, of course, as a language student at college, is just my opinion. However, I think that instead of introducing highly specialised subjects like Etymology, we should invest more hours in Maths, Science, English and Modern Foreign Languages.
 
Cellar_Door said:
At my school, for example, most people learnt French (and about 6 months of German alongside) between the ages of 11 and 14. The little you do learn is soon forgotten, so it's a bit of a waste of time really.
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It's not really forgotten; it's down in there. I took a class in "scientific German" in college and learned such useful sentences as, "The researcher heated the sulfuric acid in a flask with his Bunsen burner." Obviously I never had any use for it. Nonetheless, eleven years later when I arrived in Munich to pick up my BMW motorcycle, after hearing German for an hour in the airport, the bus, the sidewalks and the BMW shop, it all came back to me and I had a perfectly serviceable conversation with the BMW people in German, and later with the staff of my hotel, and soon everyone. I had the vocabulary of a five-year-old who had been raised in a science lab, but what I had was fluent.

One of the most important things you'll never lose is the phonetics. Almost every foreign language has a couple of sounds that are difficult for anglophones--the umlauts in German, the
tones in Chinese, the massive consonant clusters in Czech, the trilled R of most languages (for us Americans, not the Brits who say it that way themselves). The key to mastering them is to learn them when you're young and both your brain and your vocal organs are still flexible. Once you develop those synapses and those "muscle memories" they'll still be there when you need them.

The same is true of the strange grammar and syntax of another language. Trying to learn another language when you're 25 is very much harder than when you're 12, and waiting until you're 40 makes it really arduous. And just studying one opens up your thought processes to the concept that different languages have much different ways of looking at the world. Once you've studied one, the next one is much easier.
However, I think that instead of introducing highly specialised subjects like Etymology, we should invest more hours in Maths, Science, English and Modern Foreign Languages.
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As a (non-professional) linguist the idea of students taking classes in etymology is lovely, but even I would have trouble justifying it to the people who run the universities. I think it will have to remain a subject available only to people pursuing a PhD in Linguistics or a related field.
 
Two views of the world. One says we should teach kids etymology in school. Another says we shouldn't even offer classes on Latin.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/01/the_case_agains_5.html

Truth is, the only reason to teach etymology to anyone is because they are interested in it, so it should be elective. If you want it because it helps them learn English, then it would be more cost-effective to spend that money on additional English classes, rather than an etymology course.

If the students elect to take it, though, I have no issues with that.
 
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