In this way, for hundreds of years, words have been coming into our
language from other languages. Several thousand have come from Latin,
the language of the Romans; several hundred from Greek, either
directly or passed on to us by the Romans or the French. The word
school is Greek, and the word arithmetic was borrowed from the French,
who took it from the Greeks. Geography is another word which came,
through French and Latin, from the Greeks, to whom it meant that which
is written about the earth. The word grammar came in the same way. The
word alphabet is made by joining together the names of the first two
Greek letters, alpha and beta.

Many words about religion are borrowed from the Greeks, and this is
not strange, for the New Testament was written in Greek. Some of these
are Bible, church, bishop, choir, angel, devil, apostle, and martyr.
The Greeks have handed down to us many words about government,
including the word itself, which in the beginning meant "to steer."
Politics meant having to do with a _polis_ or city. Several of the
words most recently made up of Greek words are telegraph, telephone,
phonograph, and thermometer.

MANY WORDS BORROWED FROM THE ROMANS. Nearly ten times as many of
our words are borrowed from the Romans as from the Greeks, and it is
not strange, because at one time the Romans ruled over all the country
now occupied by the Italians, the French, the Spaniards, a part of the
Germans, and the English, so that these peoples naturally learned the
words used by their conquerors and governors.

INTERESTING ANCIENT STORIES. In the poems and tales which we learn
at home or at school are stories which Greek and Roman parents and
teachers taught their children many hundred years ago. We learn them