The Latin words you don't know you're using 

Back in 1969 when I started secondary school my Dad insisted that I take Latin as one of my languages. He thought it would be an advantage if I undertook a scientific career. It was very useful in medical school and throughout my career as a doctor. Thanks Dad!

This channel , in my opinion, is amongst the best channels on RU-vid. It really is a breath of fresh air. Thank you, Mr. Rob, for your valuable content.

I took three years of Latin in high school...our teacher drilled this lesson in our head...Latin is everywhere....in our language, customs, law, and government...

The amount of work you put into this content deserves so much respect. As always, very enjoyable.

My mom - a Latin speaker- taught me all the Latin suffixes and prefixes so I could work my way through word pronunciation and meaning. Things like inter, infra, intra etc. That skill still helps me today attack long strange words I do not know. Thanks mom!

My favourite is "to negotiate". Apparently the roman high guys didn´t have much to do, so they enjoyed their leisure time (otium). Except for the case of a crisis, when they had to get up and e.g. develop a peace treaty. So that was the opposite of otium which equals to "neg-otium".

How does this channel not have millions of subscribers?! Brilliant channel, thanks for your hard work.

My Latin teacher was right; I do use the Latin she tried to teach me 60 years ago.

I am so grateful to have learned English as my native language. So many ways to pronounce and spell the words. Any one who learns English as an adult is a genius.

Your posts are always highly educational, Rob! You've managed to take what could be a dry subject and have infused it with humour and wit! Well done!

As a former latin student who feels like they're losing their skills on a daily basis im excited to see if i still know most of what Rob is gonna tell us today. His videos are always so good they're worth watching even if you think you have the current video's topic mostly down! 🔥

Great video! I would like to see an episode of your channel dealing with words that are of multiple linguistic backgrounds (Latin + Greek, for example). Such words were invented for specific purposes and often have interesting histories. Thanks for your effort and time to bring your knowledge of the English language to us mere mortals!

As a fellow teacher, I salute your depth of knowledge, video quality and editing! Fantastic video 👍

Always a joy to watch your videos. No matter how long they are, they always seem too short.

It's curious how the technological terms had often made a circle : computer for example comes from Latin (that is the root of modern Italian, my language), and in Italy we adopted it from English!

latin derived words are SO common in english vocabulary now that just by reaching adulthood you are basically able to understand a good chunk of latin. so much so that when learning romance languages, youll have tons of cognates to help you learn faster. thats how badly latin has invaded our germanic language

As for anemia and cardiovascular system, in German, those medical terms do exist, but they were translated by the scholars to German terms, which can make it somewhat difficult to find the proper translation. So instead of cardiovascular system we actually say "Herz-Kreislauf-System" (lit. "heart-circleflow-system"), and instead of anemia we say "Blutarmut" (lit. "blood poverty") ... except for the physicians, of course.

I always tell my students that thankfully for us Spanish people, most scientific English words come from Latin! 😊

Automobile is also a mixture of Greek and Latin. You can make another video for the hidden Greek words in English as well. I was quite surprised when I knew “problem” was a Greek word and also its meaning is as same as the Latin word “project” (throw forward)

I love that 'Computer' used to mean a person who 'computed' and now it's a digital device. LOL. Love digging into the origin of words and language. Thank you for this channel and commentary. ❤

Never thought that the evolution of language could be so fascinating. Greetings from Brazil!

In danish, sewer is kloak, and newspaper is Avis. both latin words

Congratulations on the publication of yet another fascinating tour of our English language. By the way, I just want to commend you on your recent evolution in your production quality. I am not saying your previous videos lacked any quality, but rather the overall calibre of presentation is looking good. Keep up the strong performance, for what you are doing right now is working!

When i arrived in Italy, i didn't know Italian but with a bit of logic i used those Latin words in the English language to help me learn Italian, i also had a bonus language that helped me, Swahili which is half Arabic and Bantu, this gave me the correct vowel use for writing and some words to. Thanks for the information. 😊

It’s hard enough learning to read and write English as a junior in school, as my grandkids are just doing now. We don’t think of where the words come from until much later. They have been speaking English for many years now, which is amazing and are constantly asking questions about their world, all using usually one word ‘why’? We take so much granted and language is so important and how we use it. Your videos are very informative and help to understand the mishmash of influences that has made English the language it is. I wouldn’t like to learn it as a second language!

I went to Catholic school in the pre Vatican II days and we went to Mass every day before classes. Also I sang in the choir. The Mass(aside from the sermon), was in Latin as were the hymns. We all knew what the Latin words meant as there were translations provided. I thought it was cool. Later, in high school, I took a couple of semesters of Latin, which I enjoyed.

That was fun. It is alway interesting to see how many words we have incorporated into English.

Thank you for conducting us on yet another etymological exploration, I do SO enjoy them!

I love all of his episodes but this one is truly… EXTRAORDINARIUS! 😊 Thank you for your STUPENDUS work, Rob.

Intéressant comme toujours MERCI

What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, for one thing, they made it harder to spell simple words. But that's not really their fault. As Rob points out, it was actually a lot of English snobs who screwed up our spelling.

I had 2 years of Spanish and one of Latin in high school. And when I was in college, we had to read a book that had one chapter written in French. I was surprised that I could get the gest of things in that chapter just from Latin and Spanish. But they are called the Romance languages for a reason.

When a classmate of mine went to Italy, he didn't know any Italian, of course, so, having been to a slightly better school than I had gone to, he used classic Latin instead. To his vast surprise, the Italians, after they realised he spoke a very ancient form of Italian, understood him. When I went to Spain, remembering what my friend had told me, I took the Latin words that I knew from English, re-Spanified them and to my surprise, I could make myself understood! It was the one time that I appreciated my History of the English Language course as part of my English study. I had always found the course acronym, HEL, very apt, but this time it came in handy.

Informative and entertaining. Thankyou Rob... keep up the good work.

Dear Rob. Long time watcher first time commenter. I have enjoyed every one of your offerings since discovering your channel some years back. I'm a native english speaker from New Zealand. In this episode in particular I found you spoke too fast for my ear and I really wanted to hear all you said. I used the YT feature of adjustable playback speed for the first time..and man! It is a credit to your admiration of language that at .75 normal speed your enunciation is impeccable! A real pleasure for me to listen to you and absorb at my own pace. Keep up the great work and may your offerings stand the test of time! 🙏

Constantine was baptised in YORK ! OK, now THAT is a piece of trivia I did not know and I thank thee, Rob.

Another fantastic inspiring video by RobWords! Thanks a lot!

Wow! Another great vid. You always pack so much knowledge into every video and I love it. I enjoy the fast paced fact after fact delivery. As a nerd/geek, I appreciated the end words very much. I find it fascinating how words we know to describe tech in the recent past, present, and in the future were established many years ago but sound so modern. Kinda hard to describe my exact feeling but because we link those words to our mundane ubiquitous devices/tasks, we can't fathom an ancient Latin person using words like cursor, calculator, etc. But when you break them down like 'television', that's exactly why we have those words now to describe those objects. As a child you grow up watching your magic picture box and know it as a TV, that's it. But until someone watches your video or questions life, the normal person won't stop to think TV = "far sight". Just amazing sir.

Yet another treasure trove of interesting connections!! Thanks, Rob. I have been sharing your work some of students and friends. I hope they are enjoying and learning as I am.

This so fills me with joy! As a child, I had the opportunity to study Latin for a year. I learned about declension and conjugation, little vocabulary, and great discussions about the relationship between Latin words and English. I was HOOKED! To this day, I hear the Latin pop out, and it just tickles me. Thank you!

I'm just spilling over with happiness! I knew this already That's also the fun part of knowing some parts of language, you get joy from knowing tiny details :-)

Rob I love your channel. I always learn something new. Your newsletter is spiffy too!

I'm obsessed with this channel. I watch it with my 8yr old. He loves it too.

As a Greek the more I find myself poking into English the better I discover the similarities of words translated back into Greek after the digital revolution!

The best part about latin words is that anyone who speaks a romance language can understand them. After learning English I'm trying to learn Dutch and there are many words I still can't understand nor can I remember because they're Germanic whereas the English words come from Latin or French. The worst part is that if you know English learning another Germanic language is somewhat easier but when you get to know more intermediate and specially advanced words, English won't help you anymore.

Thank you for your video! Will share with my medical students studying Latin.

I'm an old man with a passion for words. Have read many, many thousands. Etymology I find fascinating. I always strive to pronounce a word from a foreign language correctly, so as to respect the language. I just "discovered" your channel and it's a keeper. It's more than the educational aspect, with clarity, it's also that you are a very personable sort. Regards from N. Carolina.

Wonderful! I so look forward to your videos..thank you!

As someone who is currently learning Classical Latin, I appreciate the breves and macrons in your Latin words. Many folks omit these when writing Latin. Also, since I am learning Latin, I find this rather fascinating.

IMHO, you've returned with this film at your best, and I appreciate it.

I watch every video of yours with my mum (she loves to read and has the best vocabulary of anyone I know). She has no idea how to use RU-vid and it's something we do almost every week and it's special to us. Thanks Rob. Im also a fan of you on DW (one of my preferred news channels).

Excellent work!

I knew that English is very influenced by Latin and French (I watched your video on Anglish, and the large amount of "outlandish inmingling" in our language is made clear once these words are stripped away), but I learned even more from this! It is because of these borrowings-the Roman military and elite terms borrowed by the _Germani,_ the Christian words of late-Roman Britain, William of Normandy's French borrowings, and the "inkhorn terms" of the Renaissance-that, as you said in the video on Anglish, almost 2/3rds of our terms come from. This fact came in quite handy when I was learning Spanish in high school! Thanks for the information!

Really enjoying the newsletter, Rob.. Thank you! 👍

this channel has become sooo good, and yet managed to keep it's charm. Just lovin' it!

It would be nice to have a grammar ⛓📜 influence video. You hear a lot abut where vocab comes from, but not a lot about grammar changes. They mostly come from variants within the language spreading, but still.

I love this video. It helps some people wake up from the illusion that English is superior to other languages and that knowing merely English is the measure of your intelligence. Even Thai language, which is my native language, was influenced by the Pali - Sanskrit languages or also known as linguistic indianization. Most of Thai words are derived from these two languages, and some of them are derived from Kmer. I think every language of each nation has a linguistic exchange among them.

Thanks, Rob! I'm enjoying the newsletter.

I took 2 years of Latin in high school and found it really helped me in my English classes, as well as medical terminology, when I worked at a hospital for a few years!

The word sincere means "without wax" or in modern terms "without Bondo" a nice back story on this.

Many etyma that are counted as Latin are actually themselves loans from many other languages like Punic, Celtic, Semitic, Etruscan and Greek and many etyma counted as French are actually Celtic and Germanic.

This channel brings me so much joy. How is this so calming and peaceful to my chaotic brain?

Excellent again, had to watch twice to keep up and catch my breath, great stuff 🙂

Great video! I'd just like to add that *another* English monk was also partially responsible for the spread of Latin throughout Western Europe. By the early 9th Century, paper and ink had grown so prohibitively expensive that even the few literate people could no longer afford to properly write the language in the *Roman majuscule* (what we today call "capital letters"). Instead, they used sigla, runes, and other local variations. Thus, learned men couldn't read one another's literature, and the Dark Ages ensued. So as to reverse this, Charlemagne appointed an Englisman named "Alcuin of York" to devise a new, universal script. One that would be *the best possible compromise* of all the ones then being used, made up as much as possible of *balls, sticks, and easily learned shapes* , and critically *as tiny as possible* so as to save on stationery. After much trial-and-error, Alcuin gave the world the *Carlovingian minuscule* (what we today call "small letters").

One of the advantages of learning Latin is that it provides a key to learning any of the Latin-derived languages. Knowing some Latin, another Latin-based language (French) and a Germanic language (English), I can usually get the general meaning of written texts in most Western European languages.

I really like the backdrop you chose. It's sort of appropriate to the topic, too - an old structure with modern adornments.

You’re awesome Rob - luv ur energy n tone

As always, great sense of humour! This isn’t, however, some kind of special Monty Python-like humour but a normal, “regular” one. And this is what I like!

Do a deep dive into Easter, or Eostar. What I've found is that it's essentially modern folklore that it refers to a Germanic spring goddess.

Fantastic video! I always learn something but at the same time your delivery is so great that my kids can learn something too without being totally lost.

So nicely spoken, calm and informative. I want more.

How often does @RobWords think about the Roman Empire?

Solder is an interesting example where the etymologically introduced silent letter "l" started to be pronounced over 200 years ago in Britain yet in North America it remains unpronounced.

Very very very good to see you back

Excellent episode ... as usual. Thanks for posting.

I believe the English name for the season "Fall" was changed to "Autumn" in Britain due to this mania for Latinate terms.

You made me laugh here, Rob. "All Roads Lead To Rome (because the Romans *built* them)." Lol. Funny, RobWords. 😂

Oh my goodness! That was incredible!! There was so much interesting content that I need to watch it again, and maybe again. 😊 Fascinating!!!

Duuuuude, what an amazing video, thank you, LOVE IT! I just found your channel, so subscribed. Englishman Saint Beda is an amazing reference not only to Old English but to ANYTHING really. That man wrote about ALL EXISTING KNOWLEDGE in his day, that's why we know so much about the time. If I remember correctly the Church was in some sort of a crisis due to constant and gruesome barbarian attacks and monasteries couldn't write that much because well, vikings were destroying everything and killing everyone, but Saint Beda basically came to rescue all knowledge of an era, literature, history, law, med school, you name it, he's got it. Btw he's a Saint Doctor of the Church. Also, there's just one little inconsistency: the Greek and Latin classics such as Plato, Aristotle, Virgil etc had already been translated by Catholic monks in monasteries; Arabs merely translated to their language the Catholic translations before them. Catholic monks were truly truly awesome. Those men managed to LITERALLY BUILD EUROPE sleeping and eating almost nothing every day and praying the entire work time. Spectacular. This can only be explained by the direct action of Our Lord's grace. May Our Lord Jesus Christ bless you and Our Lady His Holy Mother keep you.

So sad to see the ‘adult entertainment’ bots polluting this comment section. I guess it’s a sign of success that RobWords has enough subs they have targeted him

I find it funny that even in the times of Latin and Greek there was a debate of using "too much" of such words. In Germany there, too, is such a debate right now with English. But that is the lingua franca and it wont be it forever. Some words will go into the language, in part to the level you don't recognize the root anymore. Some word just will disappear again. As long, I can understand what is said, I don't care much.

Mr Rob dispensing knowledge and entertainment in style. Wonderful.

Wonderful perspective as always. Thanks Rob 😊

At 0:16, it's a mixture of Latin and Greek words - in fact, MOST of them are Greek (I counted only 4 Latin words plus one "latinized" Greek case). "Cardiovascular system" (at 10:52) is not entirely Latin: a heart in Latin is "cor" (hence the English "cordial"), while "kardia" is of Greek rather than Latin origin - and so is "system" (as indicated by "y" ("i grec" ("Greek i") in French) in spelling, which is absent in Latin). "Vascular" IS Latin, but it does not mean "vein" (it's "vena" in Latin) - it comes from "vasculum", a diminutive of "vas", and hence the English word "vessel". The "terrible lizzard" is also Greek, not Latin. Fun fact: the terms "digital" (from "digitus" - "finger") and "calculate" (from "calculus" - "a small stone") seem to originate from the practice of counting on fingers or using small stones, thus not really hi-tech.

The Roman Empire lives through our languages.

Just yesterday I saw you on a DW story online and thought "That's the etymology guy I watch on RU-vid." Thanks for finding the time to make these videos, I really enjoy them.

Always such fascinating vids! 👍

Actually, “system” comes from the Greek “systēma” but must have entered English through Latin.

Anemia... Bloedarmoede in Dutch and that is the normal, everyday word. Similar to zuurstof (which also exists in German) for oxygen and wiskunde for mathematics. So yeah... It IS possible to make your own words! 😂

Great informative video thanks

Thanks Rob. You make all this so interesting, and if we had more teachers like you, making things relevant, learning would be a lot more fun.

I studied German at school, Latin at university and only after that I learned English. Even then I noticed that there are almost more Latin roots in the English language than Germanic ones.

When we Italians study Latin in high school and university, we consider most medical and scientific terms as deriving from ancient Greek, not Latin. It so happens that, from the middle ages until the beginning of the 20th century, Latin was the lingua franca of the academic world. All papers published borrowed profusely from the ancient Greek lexical arsenal, sometimes adding some Latin touches, like the "ae" diphthong. Saying that "anaemia" is a Latin word is technically correct, yet it's a compound word from Greek "haima", blood. I think we should give full credit to ancient Greek, a language we mercilessly draw from to accurately define our thought and our reality.

Always enlightening.

Yet another both entertaining and informative video, that proves that I have miles (or kilometres) still to go. Thank you. Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪.

I really enjoyed this video and your expose on Latin. However, you should know that Latin was also influenced by Greek, so certain Latin words are *NOT* of Latin or Proto-Italic origin: system, atmosphere, anemia, angel, etc. I thought it was English words of *direct* Latin influence, rather than some that are half-Latin, half-Greek or so. I believe you said something to that extent in your video? Cheers, good sir.

let's make English a little difficult. Just add quiet letters here and there where no one expects them.

Absolutely love these videos. Thanks, Rob! I am one of those who took Latin in Junior High back in the day. Three years of Latin crammed into two. I was encouraged to take it so my English grammar would be improved upon. Having not used actual Latin since, here is what I have retained; what a gerund is, the Latin word for “pool”, and to conjugate the verb “to be”. In 8th grade we translated Caesar. Veni, vidi, vici anyone? Et tu, Brute? Ides of March? That’s about the current extent of my Latin, except for two sing-songy: “Cui, cui, cui. ,cuius cuius, cuius; and maybe another with quod at the end! The one thing it did absolutely help me with, is word definitions. My understanding of English, and my use of the language were greatly enhanced. Such an advantage with my college papers

I never did Latin but, I did learn Spanish and low and behold, I learnt English all over again by learning a lot of Latin.

Whenever I speak English (as a German) and I'm not finding the right words, I try to find and old Greek or ancient Latin word and pronounce it in an (kinda) English way. It always works.