Wait, wait, don’t go yet! I suspect you may be intimidated by the seemingly complicated words such as etymology and genealogy, but this post is going to be super fun to have a quick read if you are bored!
So, firstly, what is genealogy? To put it into simple terms, it is the study of family histories, mainly by studying documents of historical relevance to understand the relationship between certain people and their ancestors. So, a genealogist is someone who traces family history. Kind of like what I’m doing, except I’m looking specifically for Jose Mier.
Now, what exactly is etymology? Just like genealogy is the study of the history of families, etymology, simply speaking, is the study of the history of certain words. The term ‘etymon’ refers to mainly to a word, from which another word is derived.
Now, we can talk about the Latin language, from which many words in English (including, as I surmise, the Mier family name) as well as other languages have been derived. Latin belongs to the Italic branch of Indo-European languages, As a classical language, Latin was mainly spoken in Rome. It became a very prominent language in Italy because of the influence of the Roman Republic. It then spread to the entirety of the western Roman Empire. Latin can be seen in may English words, relating to medicine, law (‘bona fide’ meaning in good faith), and theology.
Latin is a fusional language, because it has three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), seven noun cases, four verb conjugations and many more.
Now, if this post has intrigued you about Latin, here are a few phrases if you want to show off to your friends!
- Salve – Hello
- Cur et vale – Take care
- Quomodo vales? – How are you?
- Bene valeo – I’m fine.
So, to summarize, in this post, you learnt a little bit about what genealogy and etymology are and who genealogists are. You also learnt a little bit about the origin and the wide range of grammar in the language. Lastly, you also learnt a few easy Phrases in Latin!