Here Are Some Notes That You Can Go Over at Home

Hello Parents,

I just wanted to let you know that we will be having our annual Spelling Bee at Saint Rita on December 6, 2017. After attending last year’s School Wide Spelling Bee at St. Christopher’s, I noticed that several of the students from other schools were well versed in the etymology of the English Language. My first thought was why shouldn’t the students of Saint Rita be just as knowledgeable.

Therefore, we will have a lesson in class on basic etymology and going forward I would like the students to begin to pay attention to the derivative, the origin, the part of speech and the phonetic spelling of the words that we learn.

Here are some notes that you can go over at home:

The term Archaic means that a word or meaning was once common in English, but is not used very often today. You might ask: “If a word isn’t used in today’s language, why put it in the dictionary at all?” The reason is that not all the words you read, either in or out of school, are modern words. For example, many words that are no longer used can still be found in some translations of the Bible or in the works of great writers of the past, such as William Shakespeare. You need to know the meanings of archaic words like shalt, hast, wouldst, and methinks when you read the plays of Shakespeare.

Etymology - the study of the history of words.

Origin- The country and language that the word derived from such as: The Romance Languages, French Origin, Anglo-Saxon and Old English.

Derivative- a word formed from another word or base of another word. The derivative is the many forms the words take once they’ve been adapted from the other language, however, always deriving from another language. Example: Arcadian derives from Greek, 1580s, from Greek Arkadia, district in the Peloponnesus, taken by poets as an ideal region of rural felicity, traditionally from Arkas (genitive Arkadas), son of Zeus, name of the founder and first ruler of Arcadia.

Phonetic Spelling - Recognizing the symbols that help us sound out the words. I do not expect the students to spell words phonetically, but they should recognize some of the symbols. We will go over them in class!

Thank you,

Ms.Pitanza