Prefixes I

Hi,

Today we’re going to talk about prefixes. The thing in which they differ from suffixes is the fact that most of what we have comes from Latin or Greek, in other words, they’re pretty much very similar to Portuguese. Because of this, let’s focus on the more, say, complicating ones.
For a good list of prefixes, check the websites below:
http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/prefixtext.htm
http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/prefixes.htm


Take a look at these words: inflammable, impossible, infallible, irrelevant and invaluable. You could say: “All right, teacher, I get these words. “I” and all its combinations mean “no”, just like Portuguese”.

Clever, furthermore, that’s the attitude. Prefixes, as I said before, are very similar to their Portuguese counterparts due to the fact they all descend from Latin and Greek.

However, inflammable is different, isn’t it? It means “fire-catchable”. Something that doesn’t catch fire, like water, for instance, we call non-flammable. By the way, non is a prefix too. A very easy one, though.

In the same way, invaluable means something so important and so valuable that you can’t put a price on it – your family, for example. Something that has no value we call worthless – do you remember this suffix?
Anyway, don’t worry. We don’t have many false cognates. Most of the words, suffixes and prefixes which resemble their Portuguese counterparts are indeed synonymous.

Thus, impossible, irrelevant and infallible mean exactly what you think they do – “not”.

To cap it all, let me just say that we have two ways of adding prefixes: juxtaposition and hyphenation. Let me explain them:

1) Juxtaposition: It’s when you simply put them together: ab+normal = abnormal.
2) Hyphenation: It’s when a hyphen (-) makes the ligature of the prefix and the root: ex + wife = ex-wife.

Just like all the vocabulary lessons we had – and those we will have too, there’s no “rule” to know them all infallibly. What we have is a “strategy”: read, listen, talk and write English, in other words, use the language everyday and you’ll eventually feel very comfortable with all this.

Now that you were briefed, go check those two websites above. You’ll be surprised at the amount of similarities and, maybe, even think of studying Latin and Greek a little…

Knowledge is Power.