Improve Your Memory by Ron Fry

Author:Ron Fry
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781453254202
Publisher: Career Press
Published: 2012-03-20T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

ONE CHAPTER TO A BETTER VOCABULARY

The way to a great vocabulary is at your fingertips, and it has absolutely nothing to do with those word-a-day calendars.

In this chapter, I will show you two ways to improve your memory for sesquipedalian (having many syllables) and small, obscure words.

The Building Blocks Method

Whenever possible, try to remember concepts rather than memorizing random data. For instance, if someone told you to memorize a long string of numbers—e.g., 147101316192225—it would be far better to note that each number is three higher than the one before (1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, etc.) and simply remember that rule.

Similarly, it is far better to absorb the way words are constructed—to memorize a relatively small number of prefixes, suffixes, and roots—rather than trying to cram the contents of Webster’s Dictionary into your already crowded memory.

A Note on English

Our borrowed mother tongue, English, is perhaps the most democratic of all languages. Built on a Celtic base, it has freely admitted a multitude of words from other languages, particularly French, Latin, Greek, German, and a rich body of slang (from anywhere we could get it).

The oldest branches in this diverse family tree, Celtic and Old English, are the least amenable to some of the techniques we are about to learn. These are basically simple words, not built in complicated fashion as are Latinate and Greek terms.

However, as anyone addicted to crossword puzzles can tell you, our language is replete with myriad Romance words (those from French, Italian, Spanish, and others) that often can be dissected into rather simple elements.

The Roots of Language

Here are two dozen or so roots from Latin and Greek that contribute to thousands of English words:

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