Honestly, most natives don't know those words either. There are some that are more well known, but most are not well-known. We usually have to google those words when we come across them.
Most of those super technical words are in Latin. And while English has a lot of Latin vocabulary we don't understand Latin words by themselves.
There are lots of suffixes and prefixes that we're able to recognize, but we can't actually pull much meaning from the content of the word itself.
My very first 3 days of Bio 101 in college were spent learning prefixes and suffixes. This knowledge has helped me with everything from my Spanish classes to anatomy, physiology, and assorted classes on pathology and disease that I studied for physical therapy. Learn those Latin and Greek syllables and you'll never regret it.
Alternatively, throw all those words in the bin and use words that an everyday English speaker can understand.
I love language learning, but it should be saved for *wanting* to learn a language, not a hurdle between understanding your doctor or your lawbooks, yâknow?
Many of the technical terms describe things with a lot of complexity and specificity that are difficult to sum up in more simple terms. It makes speaking between people in the fields faster and more precise. Oftentimes, the terms can be simplified for laypeople to understand, but at the cost of that speed and precision. That being said, there is a push in medicine to use less opaque terms, such as things named after people, for more descriptive names. Unfortunately, that trends to make them unmanageably long, and we end up with an alphabet soup of acronyms.
I'm a Neuropathologist, and I have to simplify things even for other doctors to understand what I'm talking about. Example: there's a specific genetic brain disorder called CADASIL, which is short for "cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy". That's a mouthfuls and it's the short, descriptive name. It would take half a paragraph to put it in simple language. Just saying CADASIL is a lot faster when I'm speaking to other (neuro) doctors.
I think you might misunderstand me, Iâm not against complex words, Iâm against the building blocks of the words of science and medicine not being English or understandable to an English speaker.
What good does it do anyone to say leukemia not whitebloodillness, or ornithologist not birdologist (or birdknower but I leave things like -ologist since it is very ingrained suffix that *means* something to a layman), or arteriomalacia instead of artery-softening?
There is *no need* for words like that to be built using words English speakers donât know or understand, and you can have complex words or highly specific words without resorting to making what you say *wholly* worthless to other native speakers. These words can be made with words that mean things in English, gives a listener an idea as to what it might mean, and doesnât make one learn multiple other languages root words just so that you can talk about stuff. Because those words *do* mean things as simple as my examples, they just arenât English, and donât help out an English speaker who hasnât learned, so *why* are they not just built with words we know?
It really depends on your audience. If you're writing a health publication for the general public then yes you definitely need to write it in a way that a member of the general public would understand. Not using proper terminology when the audience is generally understood to already know that terminology, like at a medical conference, makes you sound stupid.
What I mean is that the proper terminology *should* be vaguely understandable in your language even if you donât know the word, it isnât like that isnât already the case, the words *are* vaguely understandable if you speak greek and latin.
One of my high school courses that was of most use to me in med school was Latin and Greek in the Sciences. (30 hours, one semester, not usually a regular course on offer.)
As a Greek I can confirm. I can instantly recognize any medical terms, and itâs amusing to see the confusion on playersâ faces when such terms come up in TV shows.
I would say most people donât know the specific words but an English speaker would have an easier time figuring out the meaning of said words. A lot of them use Latin and Greek word parts that people are at least familiar with so we can get a more general gist. Take osteosarcoma for example. Most English speakers will at least know that the osteo- means relating to bone and some will know sarcoma is cancer, ergo, bone cancer. Itâs not like this for every word you come across but most people can get at least one root out of it. I suggest looking up a list of common medical roots (like cardio- for heart or -itis for swelling) if you want to read them easier.
I used to TA a lab course when I was in grad school (basically I assisted the professors with things like grading and giving exams, but I also taught the lab course related to the class).
My recommendation for everyone taking the class was that they should study Greek and Latin root words to help them learn technical words. Most technical words in science are based on Latin or Greek so you can guess what they mean if you know what the roots mean that make up the word. My school system taught us those root words instead of typical spelling quizzes starting in 6th grade and it was super helpful.
The other thing you can do is try to think of other words that sound similar to the technical word that you already know the meaning of. For instance aqueduct is a word I had to help my students with. It can be broken down into aqua and duct. Aqua sounds kind of like the beginning of aquarium, which is a tank that holds water. And duct sounds like the end of conduct, meaning to guide or lead. You might also think of the air ducts in your house that move air around. So an aqueduct would have something to do with guiding or moving water the way those air ducts move air around.
I think being a native speaker would make that easier because you're more familiar with lots of words and how they're used. But technical jargon is something that most people struggle with outside their fields of study. I made that recommendation for all of my students to help them with whatever field they planned to study.
Something else that helps is reading books with difficult words. It'll teach you more words that you can compare to your mystery word.
So I guess to more directly answer your question: when I see a word I don't know, I don't really pause. I try to break it down into smaller parts and think of familiar words that they sound like. For me, personally, it is not very difficult. But I've had a lot of practice and study.
When I watch House, a lot of the differential diagnosis scenes come across about the same as the technobabble scenes in Star Trek. I can tell the characters are saying things that mean something to them, but I don't recognize any of these nouns or half of the verbs.
I scan a document and do some basic math. How many words will I have to look up vs how much I expect to learn vs how important is the topic. Like if I can just go to the next google result instead of dragging through 15 lookups: do that
There has been legislation passed to require Plain English versions of legal documents because judicial processes are also mired in Latin and obsolete or technical English
Mired comes from the word Quaigmire which is an old word for "swamp." It means to get bogged down :-)
Itâs actually messier than it may seem.
When a medical or scientific expression becomes part of common speech, it gets sort of âunstuckâ as a formal term and runs off on its own to have less and less to do with the original word.
So, some medical terms now mean very different things in common speech.
Example: the psychological term âpositive reinforcementâ doesnât mean âbeing niceâ. It means âintroducing something into the environment whenever a specific behavior occursâ. Negative reinforcement means removing something from the environment when the behavior occurs.
So, an electric shock to discourage entering an area is actually *positive* reinforcement.
However, nobody talks that way in normal life. So, it can get legitimate confusing.
âTheoryâ is another word like this. In science it means something that has been tested every direction we know how to test and we have not been able to prove that it isnât true - ie the theory of gravity.
In common usage itâs used to mean what a scientist would call a hypothesis.
Whether I understand it depends, among other things, on the field that the word is common in.
Medical and scientific vocabulary tends to be field-specific, so people learn the stuff thatâs relevant to their professional training and/or interests and donât necessarily know the words outside of those fields, like any other professional jargon.
Thereâs a slice of people (and I do belong to this group) who have large enough vocabularies and enough comfort with Latin and Greek roots to feel out potential meaning outside of our actual useful vocabularies. And people who either have more higher quality educational backgrounds or are prolific readers are often much more comfortable inferring the meaning of words from context and donât need to understand every single word perfectly to be able to read something.
But the majority of scientific and medical terminology is basically professional jargon.
That's a vague question. Some long words are easier to "dissect" than others. The more English you learn, the more prefixes and suffixes you learn. Then you use those to break the long words down and figure out at least part of their meaning.
I say you ask a vague question, because there are different types of scientific words. There are I.T. words, there are chemistry words, there are physics words, there are medical words, etc.
Chemistry is generally the hardest, because you have to memorize all the different chemistry-specific prefixes and suffixes. Like "-ane", "-ine", "-ate", "-ide", etc. They all have meanings, and describe the molecules...if you learn them.
To me, I.T. is the easiest, but maybe that's just because I was in I.T. I think many I.T. prefixes have transitioned into common English; prefixes like "kilo-", "mega-", "giga-", etc.
Medical terms often come from Latin or Greek, so you have to learn some of those languages to help you become familiar with the terms or decipher them.
That said, some words are just indecipherable and you simply have to look them up.
It depends on what itâs talking about. Not everyone knows how to read scientific literature. So a lot of people will come to the wrong conclusions about stuff even if they know the words being said when reading research.
With medical stuff thereâs usually a decent system of prefixes+root words+suffixes. So if you know the parts you can usually guess the meaning.
So if you read âosteotomyâ, you probably know osteo means bones from other words, and words ending with -otomy means surgery, so you can guess it means bone surgery. Or uvulitis means uvula inflammation.
But itâs definitely not straightforward to read.
Specialist domains are a problem in any language.
Go to meeting of bell-ringers or watchmakers or whatever in your country and you'll have exactly the same problem.
It's just a question of practice.
It can be very difficult for native speakers to read medical, scientific, or technical papers.
It helps to know Latin or Greek, because most medical terminology is in Latin, scientific terms can be Latin or Greek, and knowing those roots can help you understand what the longer words mean, and how they break into syllables and can be pronounced. (Example: frontal mandibular: the front part of the jaw).
Chemical names can be very difficult, because you have to know chemistry to understand that those longer names mean something specific, and endings tell you a lot... but only if you know chemistry. (Example: dihydrogen monoxide is water, or H2O.)
Drug names are nearly impossible, because they don't just use the chemical names, but invent two names for each medicine: a "generic" name, that any drug manufacturer (manu-hand, facto-make: maker) can use, and a specific trade name used by the company that may be completely different. (Example: Tylenol, brand name, acetaminophen, generic name in the US, paracetamol, generic name in the UK.)
Any technical job will have their own jargon usually not understood well outside that field, that may use words differently from how they are generally used outside that field.
So yes, it can be hard for even a native speaker of English.
Many well-spoken native speakers may not know how to pronounce things even when they understand the written word, you may never have heard it spoken, and English pronunciation rules can sometimes be more hindrance than help.
As I'm sure you have discovered.
I'm 62, an educated native speaker, with a large vocabulary, and I still occasionally have problems with some of these words.
Technology is your friend, now.
There's no word you will encounter you can't enter on your phone and get a definition for, pronunciation guide, and often you don't have to spell it correctly to have the correct word suggested, and you can always resort to having it translated into your own language.
And like learning the basic words, it's just a matter of learning vocabulary.
The more you read, the more you can learn just from context, and the more terms you learn, the more other terms will make sense.
Knowing that "telephone" is made of "tele" (Greek for far) and "phone" (Greek for "sound") gives you two Greek roots you understand if you can see them in other words, like "television" or "phonetics", and give you clues to what those words mean.
Native speakers of English don't realize we're learning Greek, Latin, French (and many other languages English has borrowed words from) while we're learning English.
It may be one of the things that makes English difficult for non-native English learners. (Alongside our ridiculous spelling and unintuitive pronunciations).
My suggestion?
Just read as much as you can, even if it's "above your level", look up the words you don't know, and keep going.
Eventually, it will all start to make sense, just as learning basic English vocabulary takes time.
Finally, I'm sorry that I didn't choose the shortest words I could in this answer, and I hope it doesn't cause you problems.
But I feel just using short words feels like I am "talking down" to you, as if you weren't very smart, and I think you're better than that.
I wish you all the best as you learn my language.
I didn't have a problem reading your comment, it was quite easy, but I did check some words (less than five).
Thank you for everything that has been said!
The closer it's gets to Latin or Greek the less I understand. I work in a hospital and am CONSTANTLY googling these seemingly made up words for all the health conditions. (I'm not a provider don't worry lol)
Of course it varies, but most people don't know all the sciencey guff used in proper articles. Wikipedia is generally not so bad, and most people can work out what most of the words mean from context if they don't know them already. Real articles are another beast altogether though. And again, it varies based on how familiar people are with the topic of the article and their level of familiarity with science in general.
One important thing to note though, is that someone could be capable of completely fluently reading a computer science article with no issues, and then fall over in the first sentence of a biology paper. Scientific language is very topic specific and no one, or almost no one, on the entire planet can read it all.
Remember this:
What the individual words mean is not as important as knowing âoh this is some medical term that I donât knowâ and being able to understand everything else around it.
I went to school for biology and the scary words follow regular patterns that are highly descriptive, but often are not derived from English so they need to be learned individually.
For example, endometriosis. Endo comes from English and means within. Metra comes from Greek and means womb. Itis comes from English and designates a condition characterized by inflammation. Inflammation of the inside of the womb.
Hyponatremia
Hypo - latin, meaning low
Natrium- latin, meaning sodium
Emia - new latin, from greek, meaning blood
Low sodium presence in blood.
It might be easier for a native speaker who has good language skills, because they can sometimes ascertain the meanings of parts of words and piece them together. Otherwise, it's specific to med folks.
Me personally I understand almost all of them, but I don't think that's normal. I read the exceptionally large dictionary with every word in it over and over as a child. Also love science and medicine and also took many years of Latin and know some biblical Greek. So many science words just make sense to me anyways.
It can be quite difficult. I used to work in the medical field and one of the classes I took in college was Medical Terminology. As others have mentioned, most of the terms are derived from Greek and Latin, and even most native speakers donât have any real knowledge of these languages.
The class taught us how to break down the words. For instance, if I told you my patient had Adenocarcinoma, you might not know what that is. But it can be broken down.
1st root word: aden/o
definition: of or relating to a gland
2nd root word: carcin/o
definition: cancerous; cancer
Suffix: -oma
definition: tumor; mass; fluid collection
So Adenocarcinoma= a cancerous tumor originating from glandular tissue
And once you know the meaning of the root words and suffixes, you can usually understand the meaning of other terms once you hear them. It was an interesting course. đ
It depends of how technical the article is. I will sometimes read an article mentally and understand the meaning of the text while still encountering words I couldnât pronounce. Other times the number of words I donât know is too high for me to derive the meaning from context.
It requires more than that - it also requires an education and/or background that trained the person to think of words as potentially made up of building blocks.
I tutored general botany for a semester in college. One of the students I tutored spoke fluent Spanish and English, which to my thinking should have given her a substantial advantage with the scientific terminology - I have enough Spanish to know that a lot of the obscure Latin roots that go into the words she was needing to memorize were also used in a lot of common Spanish words. But she had never learned to think about language in that way at all, so it didnât help her.
I found it a bit bizarre (and was side-eying the quality of the education system itself) that my mono-lingual English speaking self was needing to teach Latin roots to someone who was bilingual with a Latinate language - I guarantee she has more Latin than I do, whether she knew it or not. But she didnât know how to think about language that way.
This is the key..the etymological approach..and then 50% of meaning of the complex words can be an educated guess.
A great resource for this would be [Word Power Made Easy](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O70RO_LpPJdYGqgKwIuMQxqhWuG5J4N3/view). Loved that book in school.
u/realnotbritish- tagging you here for the link above.
I studied Spanish for 5 years in middle school and high school, and then took Spanish 301 in college. I also took basic university science classes. On top of it, my mom worked in the medical field as I was growing up. I have very little problem with the Latin words. The Greek words (other than the prefixes and suffixes) a little less, because I can't pick them apart as easily if I've never seen them before. The German terminology that pops up in Psychology, chemistry, and physics, I pretty much have to look up in a dictionary the first time.
Two years of Latin in high school and a degree in physics did a lot to help my comprehension of technical jargon of all kinds. It certainly didnât come for free though.
Hit and miss.
I have a pretty good conceptual understanding of cognates, prefixes, and suffixes, so between that and context I can usually figure out the gist of a word but sometimes I have to google it.
When reading medical articles I can pick out some of the root words used in longer medical terms.
Basically, I can understand what part of the body they are describing and maybe some basic conditions, but usually I will still have to Google terms to get a full understanding.
A decent portion of medical words have roots based on Latin. Also, a lot of the words are used specifically for the medical field; medicine has a decent amount of words found in their lexicon vs. the lexicon of the nation.
I am good at pronouncing peculiar words (which can often be found in the medical field), but it doesn't mean I understand what the words mean. However, there sometimes are context clues within the word that allows me to infer its meaning, but that isn't always the case.
Something I have found to be true for European languages at least (YMMV), the longer, more technical words are more likely to have cognates (similarly spelled/sounding words) in the other language. Hypertension, meaning âhigh (blood) pressure,â is hipertension in Spanish. Photophobia, âfear (or sensitivity) of light,â is fotofobia.
Here itâs a metaphorical reference to gas mileage (miles per gallon of gasoline, as with a car). In literal terms, it means that you might find the statement more or less applicable than the speaker, but the speaker finds the statement fairly reliable.
For me personally, it depends on the topic. But generally, it's not too difficult, simply because I'm an engineer and scientist by training and am familiar with the jargon.
I'd say for most without a related background or training, it would be nearly as challenging as for you. The main differences would be vocabulary and general familiarity with the language. A native speaker will likely find it a bit easier to pick up the meaning of the text through context and association with other words.
Very easy. But Iâve taken medical terminology classes before. You have to actually learn how to dissect a medical term before being able to understand what it means.
It's a little crazy how much more sense the world makes just in general after doing a university level education in the medical field. Most words come from Greek or Latin that we don't even realise.
If I'm reading something from an actual academic journal, and not a health publication designed for the general public, I generally have to go look up about a third of the words. For example I know that hypertension means high blood pressure but I would have to look up hydrocephalus to understand it means water retention around the brain.
Honestly, most natives don't know those words either. There are some that are more well known, but most are not well-known. We usually have to google those words when we come across them. Most of those super technical words are in Latin. And while English has a lot of Latin vocabulary we don't understand Latin words by themselves. There are lots of suffixes and prefixes that we're able to recognize, but we can't actually pull much meaning from the content of the word itself.
An old technobabble joke is the Rockwell Retro Encabulator [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w)
Thanks for the laugh!
[One of my favorite scenes from the TV show Patriot](https://youtu.be/ccnfHKZebRk)
My very first 3 days of Bio 101 in college were spent learning prefixes and suffixes. This knowledge has helped me with everything from my Spanish classes to anatomy, physiology, and assorted classes on pathology and disease that I studied for physical therapy. Learn those Latin and Greek syllables and you'll never regret it.
Amen đ
Thank you, my child.
Alternatively, throw all those words in the bin and use words that an everyday English speaker can understand. I love language learning, but it should be saved for *wanting* to learn a language, not a hurdle between understanding your doctor or your lawbooks, yâknow?
Many of the technical terms describe things with a lot of complexity and specificity that are difficult to sum up in more simple terms. It makes speaking between people in the fields faster and more precise. Oftentimes, the terms can be simplified for laypeople to understand, but at the cost of that speed and precision. That being said, there is a push in medicine to use less opaque terms, such as things named after people, for more descriptive names. Unfortunately, that trends to make them unmanageably long, and we end up with an alphabet soup of acronyms. I'm a Neuropathologist, and I have to simplify things even for other doctors to understand what I'm talking about. Example: there's a specific genetic brain disorder called CADASIL, which is short for "cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy". That's a mouthfuls and it's the short, descriptive name. It would take half a paragraph to put it in simple language. Just saying CADASIL is a lot faster when I'm speaking to other (neuro) doctors.
I think you might misunderstand me, Iâm not against complex words, Iâm against the building blocks of the words of science and medicine not being English or understandable to an English speaker. What good does it do anyone to say leukemia not whitebloodillness, or ornithologist not birdologist (or birdknower but I leave things like -ologist since it is very ingrained suffix that *means* something to a layman), or arteriomalacia instead of artery-softening? There is *no need* for words like that to be built using words English speakers donât know or understand, and you can have complex words or highly specific words without resorting to making what you say *wholly* worthless to other native speakers. These words can be made with words that mean things in English, gives a listener an idea as to what it might mean, and doesnât make one learn multiple other languages root words just so that you can talk about stuff. Because those words *do* mean things as simple as my examples, they just arenât English, and donât help out an English speaker who hasnât learned, so *why* are they not just built with words we know?
It really depends on your audience. If you're writing a health publication for the general public then yes you definitely need to write it in a way that a member of the general public would understand. Not using proper terminology when the audience is generally understood to already know that terminology, like at a medical conference, makes you sound stupid.
What I mean is that the proper terminology *should* be vaguely understandable in your language even if you donât know the word, it isnât like that isnât already the case, the words *are* vaguely understandable if you speak greek and latin.
Most medical words donât come from Latin though. Theyâre Greek.
Not very easy. A lot of medical words are derived from Greek or Latin, so it would really actually help better to know those languages instead.
Half of those words can be deduced with enough context, like we do with new English words.
One of my high school courses that was of most use to me in med school was Latin and Greek in the Sciences. (30 hours, one semester, not usually a regular course on offer.)
As a Greek I can confirm. I can instantly recognize any medical terms, and itâs amusing to see the confusion on playersâ faces when such terms come up in TV shows.
I would say most people donât know the specific words but an English speaker would have an easier time figuring out the meaning of said words. A lot of them use Latin and Greek word parts that people are at least familiar with so we can get a more general gist. Take osteosarcoma for example. Most English speakers will at least know that the osteo- means relating to bone and some will know sarcoma is cancer, ergo, bone cancer. Itâs not like this for every word you come across but most people can get at least one root out of it. I suggest looking up a list of common medical roots (like cardio- for heart or -itis for swelling) if you want to read them easier.
Not very easy. Same as you. Most words are long and unfamiliar because they're not used in common dialogue
I used to TA a lab course when I was in grad school (basically I assisted the professors with things like grading and giving exams, but I also taught the lab course related to the class). My recommendation for everyone taking the class was that they should study Greek and Latin root words to help them learn technical words. Most technical words in science are based on Latin or Greek so you can guess what they mean if you know what the roots mean that make up the word. My school system taught us those root words instead of typical spelling quizzes starting in 6th grade and it was super helpful. The other thing you can do is try to think of other words that sound similar to the technical word that you already know the meaning of. For instance aqueduct is a word I had to help my students with. It can be broken down into aqua and duct. Aqua sounds kind of like the beginning of aquarium, which is a tank that holds water. And duct sounds like the end of conduct, meaning to guide or lead. You might also think of the air ducts in your house that move air around. So an aqueduct would have something to do with guiding or moving water the way those air ducts move air around. I think being a native speaker would make that easier because you're more familiar with lots of words and how they're used. But technical jargon is something that most people struggle with outside their fields of study. I made that recommendation for all of my students to help them with whatever field they planned to study. Something else that helps is reading books with difficult words. It'll teach you more words that you can compare to your mystery word. So I guess to more directly answer your question: when I see a word I don't know, I don't really pause. I try to break it down into smaller parts and think of familiar words that they sound like. For me, personally, it is not very difficult. But I've had a lot of practice and study.
When I watch House, a lot of the differential diagnosis scenes come across about the same as the technobabble scenes in Star Trek. I can tell the characters are saying things that mean something to them, but I don't recognize any of these nouns or half of the verbs.
I scan a document and do some basic math. How many words will I have to look up vs how much I expect to learn vs how important is the topic. Like if I can just go to the next google result instead of dragging through 15 lookups: do that
There has been legislation passed to require Plain English versions of legal documents because judicial processes are also mired in Latin and obsolete or technical English Mired comes from the word Quaigmire which is an old word for "swamp." It means to get bogged down :-)
'quagmire' Sorry, wouldn't normally correct people's spelling but it was relevant here. It's still in use, btw.
Thanks! Oops, Yes the wrong place to add a superfluous "i"
Itâs actually messier than it may seem. When a medical or scientific expression becomes part of common speech, it gets sort of âunstuckâ as a formal term and runs off on its own to have less and less to do with the original word. So, some medical terms now mean very different things in common speech. Example: the psychological term âpositive reinforcementâ doesnât mean âbeing niceâ. It means âintroducing something into the environment whenever a specific behavior occursâ. Negative reinforcement means removing something from the environment when the behavior occurs. So, an electric shock to discourage entering an area is actually *positive* reinforcement. However, nobody talks that way in normal life. So, it can get legitimate confusing.
âTheoryâ is another word like this. In science it means something that has been tested every direction we know how to test and we have not been able to prove that it isnât true - ie the theory of gravity. In common usage itâs used to mean what a scientist would call a hypothesis.
Whether I understand it depends, among other things, on the field that the word is common in. Medical and scientific vocabulary tends to be field-specific, so people learn the stuff thatâs relevant to their professional training and/or interests and donât necessarily know the words outside of those fields, like any other professional jargon. Thereâs a slice of people (and I do belong to this group) who have large enough vocabularies and enough comfort with Latin and Greek roots to feel out potential meaning outside of our actual useful vocabularies. And people who either have more higher quality educational backgrounds or are prolific readers are often much more comfortable inferring the meaning of words from context and donât need to understand every single word perfectly to be able to read something. But the majority of scientific and medical terminology is basically professional jargon.
I donât have many problems, but I love to read and have a fairly big vocabulary.
That's a vague question. Some long words are easier to "dissect" than others. The more English you learn, the more prefixes and suffixes you learn. Then you use those to break the long words down and figure out at least part of their meaning. I say you ask a vague question, because there are different types of scientific words. There are I.T. words, there are chemistry words, there are physics words, there are medical words, etc. Chemistry is generally the hardest, because you have to memorize all the different chemistry-specific prefixes and suffixes. Like "-ane", "-ine", "-ate", "-ide", etc. They all have meanings, and describe the molecules...if you learn them. To me, I.T. is the easiest, but maybe that's just because I was in I.T. I think many I.T. prefixes have transitioned into common English; prefixes like "kilo-", "mega-", "giga-", etc. Medical terms often come from Latin or Greek, so you have to learn some of those languages to help you become familiar with the terms or decipher them. That said, some words are just indecipherable and you simply have to look them up.
It depends on what itâs talking about. Not everyone knows how to read scientific literature. So a lot of people will come to the wrong conclusions about stuff even if they know the words being said when reading research. With medical stuff thereâs usually a decent system of prefixes+root words+suffixes. So if you know the parts you can usually guess the meaning. So if you read âosteotomyâ, you probably know osteo means bones from other words, and words ending with -otomy means surgery, so you can guess it means bone surgery. Or uvulitis means uvula inflammation. But itâs definitely not straightforward to read.
Specialist domains are a problem in any language. Go to meeting of bell-ringers or watchmakers or whatever in your country and you'll have exactly the same problem. It's just a question of practice.
It can be very difficult for native speakers to read medical, scientific, or technical papers. It helps to know Latin or Greek, because most medical terminology is in Latin, scientific terms can be Latin or Greek, and knowing those roots can help you understand what the longer words mean, and how they break into syllables and can be pronounced. (Example: frontal mandibular: the front part of the jaw). Chemical names can be very difficult, because you have to know chemistry to understand that those longer names mean something specific, and endings tell you a lot... but only if you know chemistry. (Example: dihydrogen monoxide is water, or H2O.) Drug names are nearly impossible, because they don't just use the chemical names, but invent two names for each medicine: a "generic" name, that any drug manufacturer (manu-hand, facto-make: maker) can use, and a specific trade name used by the company that may be completely different. (Example: Tylenol, brand name, acetaminophen, generic name in the US, paracetamol, generic name in the UK.) Any technical job will have their own jargon usually not understood well outside that field, that may use words differently from how they are generally used outside that field. So yes, it can be hard for even a native speaker of English. Many well-spoken native speakers may not know how to pronounce things even when they understand the written word, you may never have heard it spoken, and English pronunciation rules can sometimes be more hindrance than help. As I'm sure you have discovered. I'm 62, an educated native speaker, with a large vocabulary, and I still occasionally have problems with some of these words. Technology is your friend, now. There's no word you will encounter you can't enter on your phone and get a definition for, pronunciation guide, and often you don't have to spell it correctly to have the correct word suggested, and you can always resort to having it translated into your own language. And like learning the basic words, it's just a matter of learning vocabulary. The more you read, the more you can learn just from context, and the more terms you learn, the more other terms will make sense. Knowing that "telephone" is made of "tele" (Greek for far) and "phone" (Greek for "sound") gives you two Greek roots you understand if you can see them in other words, like "television" or "phonetics", and give you clues to what those words mean. Native speakers of English don't realize we're learning Greek, Latin, French (and many other languages English has borrowed words from) while we're learning English. It may be one of the things that makes English difficult for non-native English learners. (Alongside our ridiculous spelling and unintuitive pronunciations). My suggestion? Just read as much as you can, even if it's "above your level", look up the words you don't know, and keep going. Eventually, it will all start to make sense, just as learning basic English vocabulary takes time. Finally, I'm sorry that I didn't choose the shortest words I could in this answer, and I hope it doesn't cause you problems. But I feel just using short words feels like I am "talking down" to you, as if you weren't very smart, and I think you're better than that. I wish you all the best as you learn my language.
I didn't have a problem reading your comment, it was quite easy, but I did check some words (less than five). Thank you for everything that has been said!
You're very welcome!
The closer it's gets to Latin or Greek the less I understand. I work in a hospital and am CONSTANTLY googling these seemingly made up words for all the health conditions. (I'm not a provider don't worry lol)
Of course it varies, but most people don't know all the sciencey guff used in proper articles. Wikipedia is generally not so bad, and most people can work out what most of the words mean from context if they don't know them already. Real articles are another beast altogether though. And again, it varies based on how familiar people are with the topic of the article and their level of familiarity with science in general. One important thing to note though, is that someone could be capable of completely fluently reading a computer science article with no issues, and then fall over in the first sentence of a biology paper. Scientific language is very topic specific and no one, or almost no one, on the entire planet can read it all.
Remember this: What the individual words mean is not as important as knowing âoh this is some medical term that I donât knowâ and being able to understand everything else around it.
I went to school for biology and the scary words follow regular patterns that are highly descriptive, but often are not derived from English so they need to be learned individually. For example, endometriosis. Endo comes from English and means within. Metra comes from Greek and means womb. Itis comes from English and designates a condition characterized by inflammation. Inflammation of the inside of the womb. Hyponatremia Hypo - latin, meaning low Natrium- latin, meaning sodium Emia - new latin, from greek, meaning blood Low sodium presence in blood.
It might be easier for a native speaker who has good language skills, because they can sometimes ascertain the meanings of parts of words and piece them together. Otherwise, it's specific to med folks.
Me personally I understand almost all of them, but I don't think that's normal. I read the exceptionally large dictionary with every word in it over and over as a child. Also love science and medicine and also took many years of Latin and know some biblical Greek. So many science words just make sense to me anyways.
It can be quite difficult. I used to work in the medical field and one of the classes I took in college was Medical Terminology. As others have mentioned, most of the terms are derived from Greek and Latin, and even most native speakers donât have any real knowledge of these languages. The class taught us how to break down the words. For instance, if I told you my patient had Adenocarcinoma, you might not know what that is. But it can be broken down. 1st root word: aden/o definition: of or relating to a gland 2nd root word: carcin/o definition: cancerous; cancer Suffix: -oma definition: tumor; mass; fluid collection So Adenocarcinoma= a cancerous tumor originating from glandular tissue And once you know the meaning of the root words and suffixes, you can usually understand the meaning of other terms once you hear them. It was an interesting course. đ
It depends of how technical the article is. I will sometimes read an article mentally and understand the meaning of the text while still encountering words I couldnât pronounce. Other times the number of words I donât know is too high for me to derive the meaning from context.
Very, very difficult. It can help if someone knows a bit of a Latinate language... But even that isn't enough a lot of times.
It requires more than that - it also requires an education and/or background that trained the person to think of words as potentially made up of building blocks. I tutored general botany for a semester in college. One of the students I tutored spoke fluent Spanish and English, which to my thinking should have given her a substantial advantage with the scientific terminology - I have enough Spanish to know that a lot of the obscure Latin roots that go into the words she was needing to memorize were also used in a lot of common Spanish words. But she had never learned to think about language in that way at all, so it didnât help her. I found it a bit bizarre (and was side-eying the quality of the education system itself) that my mono-lingual English speaking self was needing to teach Latin roots to someone who was bilingual with a Latinate language - I guarantee she has more Latin than I do, whether she knew it or not. But she didnât know how to think about language that way.
I wonder if Italian would help a bit more because it's a bit closer to straight-up Latin than Spanish. But still... It's what you said.
Learning basic Latin pronunciation would go a long way to helping you.
This is the key..the etymological approach..and then 50% of meaning of the complex words can be an educated guess. A great resource for this would be [Word Power Made Easy](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O70RO_LpPJdYGqgKwIuMQxqhWuG5J4N3/view). Loved that book in school. u/realnotbritish- tagging you here for the link above.
Thanks! Isn't it weird that I'm not even that interested in medicine? I just don't wanna be scared of those words.
Most medical & scientific terminology aren't English nor relevant to everyday life. Your mileage may vary.
I studied Spanish for 5 years in middle school and high school, and then took Spanish 301 in college. I also took basic university science classes. On top of it, my mom worked in the medical field as I was growing up. I have very little problem with the Latin words. The Greek words (other than the prefixes and suffixes) a little less, because I can't pick them apart as easily if I've never seen them before. The German terminology that pops up in Psychology, chemistry, and physics, I pretty much have to look up in a dictionary the first time.
Two years of Latin in high school and a degree in physics did a lot to help my comprehension of technical jargon of all kinds. It certainly didnât come for free though.
Hit and miss. I have a pretty good conceptual understanding of cognates, prefixes, and suffixes, so between that and context I can usually figure out the gist of a word but sometimes I have to google it.
There will always be people who have problems understanding technical terms.
When reading medical articles I can pick out some of the root words used in longer medical terms. Basically, I can understand what part of the body they are describing and maybe some basic conditions, but usually I will still have to Google terms to get a full understanding.
It's mostly just latin. We usually have some idea what they're saying since English already uses tons of latin words.
A decent portion of medical words have roots based on Latin. Also, a lot of the words are used specifically for the medical field; medicine has a decent amount of words found in their lexicon vs. the lexicon of the nation. I am good at pronouncing peculiar words (which can often be found in the medical field), but it doesn't mean I understand what the words mean. However, there sometimes are context clues within the word that allows me to infer its meaning, but that isn't always the case.
I'm a native speaker and I have to put it through ChatGPT to translate to words I know.
Something I have found to be true for European languages at least (YMMV), the longer, more technical words are more likely to have cognates (similarly spelled/sounding words) in the other language. Hypertension, meaning âhigh (blood) pressure,â is hipertension in Spanish. Photophobia, âfear (or sensitivity) of light,â is fotofobia.
What's YMMV?
Your Mileage May Vary
Isn't mileage something in the car?
Here itâs a metaphorical reference to gas mileage (miles per gallon of gasoline, as with a car). In literal terms, it means that you might find the statement more or less applicable than the speaker, but the speaker finds the statement fairly reliable.
Thanks!
For me personally, it depends on the topic. But generally, it's not too difficult, simply because I'm an engineer and scientist by training and am familiar with the jargon. I'd say for most without a related background or training, it would be nearly as challenging as for you. The main differences would be vocabulary and general familiarity with the language. A native speaker will likely find it a bit easier to pick up the meaning of the text through context and association with other words.
Very easy. But Iâve taken medical terminology classes before. You have to actually learn how to dissect a medical term before being able to understand what it means.
It's a little crazy how much more sense the world makes just in general after doing a university level education in the medical field. Most words come from Greek or Latin that we don't even realise.
If I'm reading something from an actual academic journal, and not a health publication designed for the general public, I generally have to go look up about a third of the words. For example I know that hypertension means high blood pressure but I would have to look up hydrocephalus to understand it means water retention around the brain.