Expand Your Vocabulary

An extensive vocabulary gives you the options to write not only good, but really exciting articles on just about any subject you might choose. But vocabulary is not something you were born with, it has to be acquired. And simply reading something difficult usually won’t do the trick for you. Reading and not understanding leaves you as much out in the rain as not reading at all.

I suppose, there is reading, and then there is reading. If I read the newspaper, I sort of slur over the articles taking in the gist of what they say. If the slurring unexpectedly turns up information worth of consideration (about once a month) I would reread that article properly. But newspaper articles don’t do anything for my vocabulary anymore, I’m afraid. The challenge starts for me when tackling a complicated text or a complicated (or to me unknown) subject matter.

To expand your vocabulary, it is essential to understand what the article is about in its entirety. This means, when hitting upon an unknown word or unclear sentence you have to hunt down the proper meaning of either word or turn of phrase. That’s where mere reading become learning. Hunting down the exact meaning of a word can be quite easy, as when looking up an unfamiliar technical term. It may be terribly hard if it is a word that is used for many different shades of meaning or one that has shifted in use over time.

It always helps if you are aware of the history of a word, i.e. if its origins are from Latin, Greek, French, or some other language. Correctly spelled words usually give you a hint as to their origin, and this is why I am constantly battling against the dumbing down in spelling. If you change the spelling of a word, you lose its origins, and thereby make it more difficult for someone to expand their vocabulary. What seems like an easy solution to mask the short-comings of education thereby becomes an effective block for any upward movement of the individual.

English has always used other languages when being stuck up on own words, and just adapted them somewhat in their pronunciation. The kindergarten derived from the German is such a perfect example. Normally you would encounter the German words rather in all matters military, while Latin and Greek will help you in all matters scientific. From the colonial past, many words have entered our daily life and enriched our language.

If you are learning a foreign language, the same trick of hunting down words will help you to expand your vocabulary in the new language, and sometimes in your own as well. It all comes down to: Read, research, understand, use. You’ll find that the broader your vocabulary gets, the more fun you’ll have out of writing.

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