Greek and Latin roots — English science assembled from parts

Most academic and scientific English is TRANSPARENT once you know the parts: photo (light) + graph (writing) = photograph; tele (far) + phone (sound) = telephone; tele + graph = telegraph; micro + scope = microscope. Sealed: ~50 common combining forms pair into ~2,500 compounds (50^2, https://narrowhighway.com/s/5635602375b641735e6151d28fa5157a73b1a13df1da910f905c868a8251cf8b) — self-documenting vocabulary, no memorization needed. This is decoding at the MEANING layer, the twin of phonics at the sound layer: a reader who knows the roots reads 'unbreakable' as un+break+able and 'photosynthesis' as light+putting-together, and never meets those words as strangers. It is the highest-leverage vocabulary teaching there is — a few hundred roots unlock tens of thousands of words.