The importance of word origins

I've been reading a book about building vocabulary in English, whose title I'll post here as soon as it's back in my hand. The book's primary methodology is learning word root and prefixes of Latin and Greek to help remember and parse new vocabulary. (They also mention some other techniques like using word context and mnemonic devices.) Learning word origins is similarly applicable when learning the vocabulary of a foreign language. Unfortunately, very unfortunately, translation dictionaries don't give you the origins of words when you translate them. This is even true of the online dictionaries that should have unlimited space and be able to link to the origin of each word from its true dictionary definition. I've been scouring the wonderweb with search terms like "German word origins" but nothing really comes up. I'm sure that a full German dictionary such as Das Deutsche Wörterbuch has word origins, but I can't read well enough to make any sense of it yet. Luckily for me my target language shares many common roots with English, so often I can look up the English origin of the word. For example stattfinden means to take place. I looked up statt by itself and found that it means instead of. That led me to look up stead in English, which means the place or roll that someone or something should have or fill. I only use stead when I say "in his stead" instead of "in his place," as you probably do as well to sound clever. Anyhow, I can think of stattfinden as meaning to find in the place of which leads me to to take place. I know this is pretty basic stuff but applied to more complicated words this technique is invaluable. Of course I'm taking advantage of the common Germanic root which in Old English is stede which means place. Also the Oxford dictionary says that it comes from an Indo-European root shared by the verb to stand. Neato.

I'm slowing progressing throught the first twelve units of the FSI German course. I'm now right in the middle of unit 10, which is disappointing since I've been at it for 9 months or so. But lack of discipline and life's turmoil always slows me down. I hope in time that I can learn to value an hour of language study each day as much as a shower or cup of coffee in the morning. The key to the habit is as always motivation. I need to imagine that I will soon be attending urban planning conferences in the German speaking world and this will lovely Germanic to chit chat with afterward over beer and spätzle. I start a graduate program in urban planning in two weeks. I have no idea if that will permit me any time for language study. Vielleicht.