- [Instructor] Hello readers.
Today we're going to talk
about things called affixes.
One of the things that I love
about the English language
is how flexible its words can be.
You can take little word
parts and stick them together
to make new words.
If I read something once, I've read it.
If I read it again, now I've reread it.
That little re thing tells you,
"Oh, it's happening again."
There are lots of these
little word parts in English
and we call them affixes.
They can come at the
beginning or the end of words.
At the beginning of words
we call them prefixes.
Un is a great example of a prefix.
It means no or not.
When you're upset, you're not happy.
You're unhappy.
When you are not available,
you are therefore unavailable.
You see?
When we put affixes at the ends of words,
they're called suffixes.
The suffix ful, for
instance, means full of.
So if you're full of joy, you're joyful,
if you're gratitude, you're grateful,
and if you're full of power,
you are, say it with me, powerful.
You are powerful!
Look at all these words you can make.
Some common prefixes you might see include
re, meaning again as in redo or reread,
dis, meaning not or the opposite
as in disuse or disobey,
mis, meaning wrong, as in
mistake or misunderstand.
Some common suffixes you might see include
L-Y or ly, meaning a way to do something
as in happily or snappily,
less, meaning without as
in harmless or wireless,
ness, meaning a state of being,
which is another way of
saying it makes nouns
as in happiness or hopefulness.
Oh, did you see what I did there?
I took the word hopeful, which
already has a suffix in it,
it means full of hope,
and I added ness to it.
Now it's a word that means the
state of being full of hope.
That's the magic of affixes.
They're these word parts
that you can snap on
to pretty much any word in
order to change its meaning.
So remember, prefixes
are word parts that come
at the beginning of words.
The prefix pre means before,
as a little clue and
can help you remember,
and suffixes are word parts that come
at the end of the word.
There are gonna be lists of these affixes
for you to study,
but what I liked doing when
I first studied this stuff
was to take those lists
and make them into games.
Make nonsense words.
Write roots and affixes
on little index cards
and shuffle them up into new combinations
and then argue with
your friends and family
about what your newly minted words mean.
Let me shuffle up some right now.
(cards shuffling)
It's sure to be a dispetrographic time.
Dispetrographic.
Okay, so that's no rock pictures
adjective forming suffix,
it's a describer.
So, I guess I will not be
taking any pictures of rocks.
Anyway, you can learn anything.
David out.
