Over 60% of words used in the English language have Latin or Greek roots. If this large percentage is not convincing enough to start learning your roots, prefixes and suffixes, think of all the other language origins that may appear in a spelling bee or on your path through higher education. Many Japanese and Spanish words have hard and fast rules on how words from these languages are spelled, and these rules are very easy to master. Going further, French and German both have language patterns that are consistent. For example, if you know that a word is from German, and it has a long 'i' sound, you know it is spelled 'ei.' The more patterns you know of various languages, the more valuable it is to know from what language a word originated.