Phonics of Morphology.

English is a morphophonemic language, written with letters that encode both sound and meaning. As Denise Eide of Logic of English explains, “English words are comprised of two components: phonemes and morphemes. Students need knowledge of both phonology and morphology to fully understand the written code of English.” You can read more in her article about morphemes. 

Learning about morphology is helpful for building vocabulary.  Studying morphemes through word roots, prefixes, and suffixes is even more powerful when combined with phonics of the language of origin. Within each language of origin, spellings are much more regular. Learning the sound spelling patterns of each of English’s main languages of origin is powerful and multiplicative—an efficient way to learn more about our language by looking at several different levels of language at once.

Morphology books:

Apples and Pears Spelling, includes morphology. 

Marcia Henry, Words, integrates phonics, spelling, and word study with word roots and prefixes. 

40L’s syllables lessons 7, 8, and 9 are focused on morphology, separated by language of origin. First, watch the Super Speed Syllables overview to cover the basic sound spelling patterns taught in the first 6 lessons. You will need the Super Speed Syllables worksheet. The syllables lessons 7 to 9 have an associated morphology worksheet and a Greek and Latin word root bingo game.

English is, at base, a Germanic language. Most of our common words come from Old English or other Germanic languages. See the top left picture below for the sound spelling patterns from Old English or Germanic origin. English has many words that come from Latin, often scientific or technical words. Also, many longer, more difficult words in English come from Latin.  The bottom left picture shows the sound spelling patterns of English words of Latin origin. While there are not as many words of Greek origin, they are used for many new inventions and words used in science. The top right picture shows the main sound spelling patterns of English words of Greek origin. There are also a fair number of English words of French origin. For many words, it is difficult to tell if the origin is from Latin or French, since there are many words that have similar roots from both languages. If you want to know the language of origin of any English word, just type it into the website etymology online. It is a very useful morphology resource.

You can integrate teaching the phonetic sound spelling patterns shown above into any word root study program. 

40L developed a Greek and Latin word root bingo game using 32 common Greek roots and 32 common Latin roots. Sample words and definitions are read aloud as the game is played. Interestingly, 40L volunteers found that word root retention using the game and reading definitions was better than using several different word root programs or worksheets. 

Other Greek and Latin word root resources:

William Draper Swan's 1851 Spelling Book. Word Roots begin on page 93.

Jessie MacMillan Anderson's 1897 A Study of English Words. 

Manik Joshi’s Dictionary of Root Words. 

There are many other good word root lists and programs. You can also Google word root lists or use etymology online to research the roots of specific words. To maximize retention, it is best to limit the number of words and roots studied at a time. Most word root programs cover too many roots and words per week and have little review. A smaller number of words studied with more frequent review should be more efficient in the long run. 

Studying morphology and word roots enhances your vocabulary, making it easier to understand complex texts. It also helps you understand the English language at a deeper level. This knowledge gives you a powerful tool to make your reading more rewarding.