Monday, September 22, 2014

What, if anything, is o-log-y?


After having published other blogs for students and teachers of human anatomy and physiology, it occurs to me that one of the biggest struggles is becoming immersed in a whole new terminology.  

Okay, that didn't just occur to me.  What recently came to mind is the idea of producing a blog for the specific issue of learning the language of human science and medicine. 

So here it is!

Looking ahead, I think I'll be covering concepts like these:

  • Tricky issues like Latin pluralization
  • Pronunciation issues
  • How word parts work, including how terms are built and alternate meanings of word parts
  • Where the terminology comes from
  • Eponyms
    • How to use them
    • Why avoid them
    • Who those people are or were
  • Dissecting specific terms to learn more about their meanings
  • Tips on using terminology
  • Weird terms or usages
  • Terminology trivia

Some of my blog posts will be basic and others will be more advanced.

If you teach in the human sciences, you may want to use the more basic posts to help your students by including links to them in your syllabus, course website or learning management system, or discussions and email messages with your students.  The more advanced posts may help you clarify some of the gaps in your own working knowledge of terminology.

If you are a student of the human sciences, both the basic and advanced posts will help you become more deeply immersed in a new language.  That can only help you better understand concepts and how they are explained or communicated to you.

If you have an ideas for topics, requests, tips, or puzzles you'd like help in solving, please contact me!

The title of this blog is o-log-y.  I derived that name from a dissection of the "-ology" phrase appended to many terms that describe fields of study, such as biology (the scientific study of life) and etymology (the linguistic study of word origins).

[ocombining form, -logwords (study of), -y activity]


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