How does a knowledge of Latin assist with an ever-expanding vocabulary in English and beyond? Vox Clara Tutoring Latin Tutor, Philip Marshall, discusses the day-to-day benefits of understanding Classical Languages.
The vocabulary of political discourse
Recently, over a nice cup of tea, my housemate and I were talking about nothing much at all. One of the topics we ended up on was political discourse. He mentioned he had been watching old debates between Ted Heath and Michael Foot and played me a short clip. Now, there were plenty of very notable differences between the style of debate in that clip and the present. They didn’t interrupt each other; they didn’t speak over each other; they responded to each other’s points. I could go on and on. However, despite the links that could be made to rhetoric, the aspect which I wish to raise was their vocabulary.
Often, we hear in politics – especially from the controversial but certainly fluent Jacob Rees-Mogg and ex-speaker John Bercow – a broader and more interesting range of words than we are used to in everyday life. Famously, we have had the longest (non-technical) word in the English language used frequently in parliament in the last few years: Floccinaucinihilipilification. This is defined as ‘the act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant, of having no value or being worthless’. The use of this word is clearly humorous. But it does speak to a general change in register, which occurs in political discourse.
However, when listening to our clip of Heath and Foot, this moved up a level again. Two words which stood out as unusual were ‘mendacious’ and ‘fallacious’. Their meaning is clear to a Classicist: within them we hear the history of the Latin words mendax and fallere.
How do we develop our vocabulary?
A normal vocabulary range for an adult Brit is somewhere between 20,000 and 35,000 words. At 5 we know around 5,000 and at 10 we know about 10,000. We then continue to learn new words at a decreasing rate, ending up once we reach firm adulthood just one new word a day. In middle age when we tend to stop learning new words, or forgetting as many as we learn. Some of this will be active and some of this will be passive: words we just recognise and words which we can use at will. A word will first be added to passive, before moving, after repeated exposure, to active. One question we can ask ourselves is do we want to stop learning or do we want to continue to expand both?
The benefits of a Latin vocabulary
When hearing ‘mendacious’ my mind automatically brings out mendax which means ‘liar’. Although the word is new to me, the meaning is natural. It doesn’t require me to look it up in the dictionary. Hearing fallere, which means ‘to trick’, again, the dictionary may remain on the shelf.
When listening or reading English (or French and Spanish, both of which I am learning), this happens a lot. A new and unknown word appears and either straight away, or after a moment’s thought, I can divine the meaning. I work out where it comes from – Greek or Latin – and can carry on without the distraction of getting out my phone to check. Now, this is not to argue that we ought to spend lots of time learning Latin and Greek simply to save time looking up words later in life. However, it’s just one example of the many benefits and sheer joys of having a Classical education. It is a pleasure to word out the history of a word; to comprehend it without looking it up; to see words in another language and just understand them. It allows us without any extra effort to be constantly expanding our vocabulary.
The joys of a Latin vocabulary
Mendacious and fallacious are words I’ll be trying to use, to stick them in and move them from passive mind (passive before I had ever even come across them) to active, ready to bring them out to show off at a later date. How many words every day does a Classicist hear and understand for the first time without realising? I don’t know. But as someone who is always wanting to improve the use of my own language, it’s a gift of my education I wouldn’t give up for anything.
Philip Marshall is a Latin teacher and tutor with Vox Clara Tutoring. Find out more about him here or use our Contact Form to enquire about lessons.