On Mon, 29 Jan 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > Julia wrote-
> > After my sister and I both had had some German and some Latin, we
> > discovered very quickly that it was a bad idea to ask the meaning of a
> > word within earshot of our mother. While "look it up" had been the
> > response a few short years earlier, she made us dissect the word and
> > figure out what parts of it came from what word in Latin, or what word was
> > cognate with it in German; and after you've gone through that 3 or 4
> > times, you just ask for someone to pass you the dictionary and don't even
> > bother asking about any definitions. (Now, if the dictionary definition
> > doesn't make sense for the word in the context in which you met it, then
> > you can have a discussion about it where you're not being asked to be an
> > etymologist.)
>
> You are reminding me of my vocabulary book in highschool. .... And you
> lived it? Sheesh, you must have *kicked butt* on standardized testing. :-)
Define "kick butt on standardized testing", and I might be able to
confirm. :)
It wasn't always fun at the time, but it gave me a set of tools that have
come in handy at times.
Julia
