I read this book to better understand English roots, help me to improve the efficiency of vocabulary reciting. This book combines with basic linguistic knowledge and lots of English history and roots stem from Greek and Latin, the structure is amicable and easy to read, suit for new guys interested in this field.
Quotes:
English has absorbed vocabulary from other languages, but as a result of both the accidents of history and the great esteem in which ancient Greek and Roman culture had been held in the European tradition, over 60 percent of all English words have Greek or Latin roots; in the vocabulary of the sciences and technology, the figure rises to over 90 percent.
On the other hand, most lists of basic English vocabulary contain 800–1,000 words. That doesn’t mean, of course, that one’s vocabulary is limited to that number of words; there are 25,000 words in the Oxford Pocket Dictionary, but it is claimed that 90 percent of the concepts that these words define can be expressed with a vocabulary of 850 words.
