What's Da Buzz?

Just about everyone who visits my blog is minimally bilingual. English was taught to us along with Tagalog and whatever other dialects and languages we’ve picked up. But as I am finding out, there is one more language that is incredibly handy to learn.

That language would be Latin. The reason for this is the medical terms, dental terms, and almost all of the scientific fancy sounding terms are all in Latin. In the pharmaceutical field, all of the names of the medications are related to Latin. So knowing a bit about what the prefixes, suffixes, root words and language structure of Latin can go a long way in determining when a doctor is trying to blow you off with a fancy sounding diagnosis.

Let me give you a few examples most should be familiar with.

Arthritis – a condition where your joint(s) are inflamed or a little swollen. What does the word arthritis mean in Latin though? Arthr means joint. “itis” means inflammation or swelling. Together it means a swollen or inflamed joint. Wow, how creative that is.

How about the term rhino? What does that mean? Well most would have a picture of a rhinoceros. Well, “cer” means horn. “Rhino” means nose. Looking at the picture, I wonder where they got that name from. Rhinoplasty is nose + surgical repair or in slang terms it is a nose job. Getting the hang of this yet? This israther easy since there are not too many twists and turns like you have in the English language.

Here is one more but we’ll do it in terms of a scenario that is rather common in Doctor’s offices. A patient comes in complaining of pain in a muscle (pick one). After all tests are done, they declare that you havefibromyalgia. Okay, so what have they done for you outside of given you some prescription medicine?

Well, fibro means fiber. “My” means muscle. “Algia” means pain. So their diagnosis is you have pain in a muscle. In other words, they do not know the true cause and used a catch all phrase that means exactly what you said you had. They just made it sound cool by putting it in Latin.

The patient said they had pain in a muscle. So the diagnosis is you have pain in a muscle fiber. When you have people whining about standard aches and pains that come with age and injuries, they have to tell them something then give them a drug and send them off.

I wish it was more complicated than that but it really isn’t. Sure some of the things are not pleasant to get but when you get the Latin behind the terms you will find out if it is a ho-hum standard ailment or something significant. Knowledge is power!!

Anah

photo credits from http://www.gifttrap.com/gallery-main/image_full/24/