Abstract
Medical language is the language used by medical experts in their professional communication and incorporates more than 2,500 years of a development influenced mostly by Greek and Latin medical traditions. Its specific features and characteristics are studied from various aspects. It is closely connected with the immense development of technology and science that brings new concepts to the language; medical vocabulary is an open and continually changing phenomenon and its units often acquire new meanings. Learning English medical language that has become a lingua franca during the last few decades creates certain obstacles for learners in the form of collocations, irregular forms, existence of synonyms, doublets, abbreviations, false friends, etc. To manage medical language at an appropriate level requires looking for the most convenient teaching and learning strategies. Good proficiency of English medical language opens new horizons to medical professionals and offers various options of its application in practice. As an international means of communication it slowly penetrates into national medical vocabularies worldwide.
Highlights
Papers dealing with medical language are published in various scientific research journals, medical journals, linguistic journals, teaching journals, conference proceedings, etc
Medical terminology has been studied from various aspects, e.g. historical – “the Greco-Latin core of the medical terminology is a result of the historical development of medicine as a science” (Doncu & Andronache, 2014, p. 348) and most linguists have accepted Jespersen’s assertion that modern science borrowed heavily from Latin and Greek roots to create compound and derived words (Jesperson, 1931 cited in Van Dyke, 1992); etymological – explaining the origin and development of terms, e.g. etymon = origin of a word and + logos = word (Bujalková, 2013; Brown, 2014); morphological – by means of prefixes and suffixes different meanings of the word can be obtained (Džuganová, 2013); semantic – changes in meaning are as common as changes in form
Instead of taking temperature, responding to treatment and being on a diet, non-natives often use measuring temperature, answering to treatment, and having a diet. These examples show that collocation competence is a problematic area for EFL learners and collocations should become part of medical language teaching and learning
Summary
Medical language is the language used by medical experts in their professional communication and incorporates more than 2,500 years of a development influenced mostly by Greek and Latin medical traditions. Its specific features and characteristics are studied from various aspects. It is closely connected with the immense development of technology and science that brings new concepts to the language; medical vocabulary is an open and continually changing phenomenon and its units often acquire new meanings. To manage medical language at an appropriate level requires looking for the most convenient teaching and learning strategies. Good proficiency of English medical language opens new horizons to medical professionals and offers various options of its application in practice.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
