In the face of a challenge of such

In the face of a challenge of such large proportions, a well-organized attack is called for. Although we cannot expect the language to always oblige us in our quest for shortcuts to an enhanced vocabulary, we fortunately will discover that some of the work has already been done for us: most of the complex words in the language have similar structures. If we learn the rules that reveal the structure of a certain kind of word, it will relieve us of some of the burden (and, perhaps, boredom) of learning all the words of this type individually. We must divide to conquer. We will find that some aspects of the study of word structure (known as morphology) are helpful in analyzing words into their parts and in understanding how the parts contribute to the meaning of the whole. It will also come in handy to understand how English came to be the way it is and to learn some of the linguistic characteristics of the principal languages that English has drawn on to reach its present position.