Learning English Or is it Greek?

This semester I have been learning two languages. Well not really, but kind of.
As a way to deal with taking classes in disciplines in which I have no background I spent a lot of time looking up words and making a spreadsheet with my own list of definitions. One of my classes is vertebrate paleontology which is heavy on bones and genus or species names of animals. This means many of the words and terms are Greek or Latin based. For how much people talk about Latin roots I have found that most of the words I deal with are more likely to be Greek. It has actually been really cool and a super good learning tool. For example, cryptodires and pleurodires are the two main types of turtles. I could guess that crypt meant mysterious or hidden, something along those lines. From previous words I know pleuro meant side. Thus, when I finally found out that dire means joint and I learned more about the difference between the two types of turtles the names made complete sense. Cryptodires (Hidden joint) turtles that we are used to in North America tuck their heads into their shell. The joint of their neck is at the base of the neck and the head draws back directly.

Pleurodires (Side joint) however have necks that fold to the side in able to hide under their shell.Here is a google link of what they look like. To those of us used to cryptodires these are pretty crazy looking turtles!

The point though is that once you know what a word means, not the general definition, but the actual root things start making a lot more sense. It has been really cool to start learning enough to be able to recognize or guess the meanings of words without looking them up. So yeah, I've been working on learning Greek and Latin this semester, just on the side, but really I have just been learning English.