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It’s all Greek and Latin

Epitheca and hypotheca, the two parts of the diatom frustule, can be remembered by the fact that the epitheca, epi meaning above or upper (think epidermis, the upper layer of the skin), sits above and over the hypotheca - hypo meaning lower or below (as in hypodermic, below the skin). These two parts fit together like a box, with the epitheca acting as an overlapping lid that sits upon the hypotheca. The water in the surface layers of a lake are called the epilimnion, the deepest layers the hypolimnion. Limnic refers to lakes - see the entry below about Three Lakes.

The use of Greek or Latin words, the classical languages, in science has been cause for complaint by many people, most often students who find the new language terms a hurdle. But it is also seen as a barrier to the non-academics, a barrier that prevents them from even trying to understand what is being said or what has been written.

This is a great shame, and a failing of our school education system. These terms are not difficult, and in fact they are very logical. Indeed there are a lot of them that are incorporated into our everyday language and which we use without a second thought.

Maybe that is the secret. We should think more about the words we use.

But why do the sciences use so many of these Latin and Greek terms? The simple answer, and the most practical answer, is because they work so well at being additive, and embrace whole concepts in one single compound word. Things that in English - and possibly in other languages too, though I know German often incorporates nice long words that convey a whole sentence of meaning - but in English certainly, a sentence is instead required. As an example think about the word palaeoecology. Palaeo has the sense of past, mostly the ancient past, as in palaeolithic (including lithos which means rock or stone - so old stone age), palaeontology (incorporating onto meaning living being or creature, and logos meaning knowledge of - the study of ancient living things). Ecology incoporates the logos element as well as eco which is from the Greek for home, oikos - the study of our home, or the natural home of living things. Thus palaeoecology is the study of the natural home of living things in ancient times.

In addition to just extracting what the words mean, when added together they take on a specific and more complex meaning. Thus ecology is widely understood and is in reality a far more complex idea than just the study of the natural home of living things - it incorporates an understanding of the flows of energy and materials, the interactions between the environment and the living organisms, between the different organisms and relationships and fluctuations of all the populations. In fact the whole ecology of an area, however small, is so complex that it defies full understanding in all aspects.

The most basic Greek and Latin terms that are widely used in the sciences are not difficult. They have to be learned, but since so many are already incorporated into words in everyday use, the task is not that great.

There is the historical fact that Latin, and to a lesser extent Greek, was the language used by scholars and therefore enabled people from different cultures and languages to be able to communicate. It is still used in some cases in scientific papers particularly in cultures that use different letter systems - Chinese or Cyrillic for example.

Knowledge of these classical language terms would expand the vocabulary of modern English that is in use, and would also improve the ability to understand so much more. In fact it would also make the romance languages of French, Spanish and Italian less alien to English speakers.