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This list is to help non-native English learners? Many native English speakers might have trouble with a few of these: abeyance, abscission, accretion, amalgamate, anodyne, antediluvian, apposite, arabesque, atavism, and avuncular.



As an Italian native with a classical studies background, this kind of words are easy for me. They're almost all Latin-derived and they usually sound very similar to the Italian equivalent. You wanna know what's hard for us? The street talk. You know like when you shoot the breeze before you really spill the beans about your shenanigans while riding shotgun on a friend's old jalopy.


Those are fairly rare words in day to day English. Some of those words I have a "feeling" for what they mean, I've definitely seen some of them in print. Most of those words I would look up if reading on a Kindle, just to check my feeling about the word. Have I used any of those words in my own writing or speech? Nope!

From the linked website, the best words to learn for a learner are from the 1000 Most Common English Words section.


Yes, beside those you listed (that are not common in a normal conversation) there is a large number of Latin derived words in English, as a rule of thumb, there are almost always two words in English a non-latin derived one and a latin derived one having more or less the same meaning (or a near enough one).

Usually native English speaking people will use the non-latin one, but of course they also generally know it (or at least have heard or read the "other" one) so they can understand you alright, but I am told that if/once you are proficient enough in English, when you - mistakenly - use the latin based ones you sound like being snob or "upper class" or very formal (and wanting to seem so).

A few examples (of common words):

apartment=flat < I never managed to get this right

obscurity=darkness

arms=weapons

annually=yearly

legal=lawful

constructor=builder

transmit/transmitted=send/sent

custodian=keeper


Exactly :)

My friends say that I usually sound "academic" more than snob.

Some time ago I witnessed this first-hand. I was at a speaking event, the speaker was Canadian. He said: "If you ever had the fortune to encounter [Mister XYZ]". I would have definitively expected something like: "If you were lucky to meet him"/"had the luck to have met him" or similar. He was native, but very academic indeed. :)


> use the latin based ones you sound like being snob or "upper class" or very formal (and wanting to seem so)

I'm guessing that distinction comes from the norman conquest, with the upper class speaking French with the latin version for 500 years and the lower class speaking a germanic version.


> You know like when you shoot the breeze before you really spill the beans about your shenanigans while riding shotgun on a friend's old jalopy.

That sounds like quite the night out...


Well, in the early morn' we called a cab to steam off the debauchery and quit hopscotchin' around :)


The goal (afaict) is not precisely conversational fluency, but rather an ability to pass the exams such as GRE and GMAT - inferred from the fact that the lists are mostly from "Barron's" guides for those exams.




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