Learning New Words: Parts of Speech and Suffixes, Part 2
2022-05-07
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1Hello! This week on Ask a Teacher, we will continue to answer Erol's question about learning new words by using suffixes to create adjectives and adverbs.
2Hello,
3My name is Erol.
4What is the best way of learning words?
5I am very confused about this subject.
6Can you give me some advice about learning words, please?
7Last week we looked at creating nouns and verbs by adding suffixes to words.
8Now, we will create adjectives and adverbs with suffixes.
9Words that add meaning to a sentence are known as content words.
10Content words often appear as one of the four major parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
11Let us look at an example with all four major parts of speech:
12The orange cat cried loudly.
13The adjective, "orange" describes the color of the cat which is the noun.
14Loudly is the adverb that describes the verb "cry" in the past tense.
15We add suffixes to the end of the base form of a word to change the part of speech.
16This way we can create several words from the base form in English.
17To change some nouns into adjectives we can use several endings: -ful, -less, -y, -al, -ic, and -ical.
18For example:
19"Beauty" (noun) + suffix -ful = "beautiful"
20Change the "y" to "i" and add the suffix -ful.
21The suffix -ful means having the quality of the noun.
22"Emotion" (noun) + suffix -less = "emotionless"
23The suffix -less means "without."
24"Rain" (noun) + suffix -y = "rainy"
25The suffix -y means to be characterized by.
26"Organization" (noun) + suffix -al = "organizational"
27Keep the noun suffix -ation. And add -al, the adjective ending.
28This suffix means "relating to."
29"History" (noun) + suffix -ic = historic
30Remove the -y and add the suffix -ic.
31This word means important or famous in history.
32"History (noun) + suffix -ical = historical
33Remove the -y and add the suffix.
34This word means relating to history or past events.
35Let us move on to making adjectives from verbs!
36To turn some verbs into adjectives, we can use the suffixes -ive, -ious, -ing, -ed/-en and -able.
37For example:
38"Create" (verb) + suffix -ive = "creative"
39Drop the -e and add the suffix.
40"Study" (verb) + suffix -ious = "studious"
41Drop the -y and add the suffix.
42Sometimes participles are used as adjectives. These adjectives can have a sense of either continuation (-ing) or completion (-en or -ed).
43For example:
44"Cry" (verb) + suffix -ing = "crying"
45Keep the -y and add the suffix.
46An example sentence is:
47The crying baby did not sleep all night.
48"Shake" (verb) + suffix -en = "shaken"
49An example of this suffix is:
50I often drink teas shaken with milk.
51Lastly, for making adjectives from verbs, we have the suffix -able. It means able or possible to do.
52"Break" (verb) + suffix -able = breakable.
53This word means able to be broken.
54Finally, many adjectives become adverbs by adding the suffix -ly.
55Creative (adjective) + suffix -ly = creatively
56Now let us complete the chart from last week that lists possible words you can make by adding suffixes:
57Understanding suffixes can be a path to quickly learning a lot of new content words.
58What question do you have about American English? Send us an email at learningenglish@voanews.com
59And that's Ask a Teacher.
60I'm Faith Pirlo.