| Hi everybody. My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I am going to talk about common suffixes. We are going to talk about what suffixes are and we are going to talk about a few examples of suffixes. Let's get started. Okay. First point for this lesson is, what is a suffix? Suffix, that's our key word for this lesson. So Suffix. A suffix refers to the letters that come at the end of a word. These can be like two letters, maybe three or four letters. It's like a short group of letters at the end of a word. |
| Suffixes can change how a word is used. By this, I mean, it can change like the grammar of the word. So meaning changing a word from an adjective or changing a word from a verb into a noun for example or into like the comparative form of an adjective. So, these can change how a word is used in terms of grammar. Suffixes can also show meaning. So we are going to see some examples where the suffix, the group of letters at the end of the word give us a hint. It gives us a hint about the meaning of the word. |
| So there are two kind of focuses I want to look at for this lesson. In this lesson also, I am going to introduce just a few suffixes. There are a lot more than these but these are a few common ones. So let's take a look. |
| First, I want to focus on some suffixes that really change grammatically how we use the word. So, if you've watched these videos, maybe you've seen lessons about making the comparative form of adjectives. So in that video, we saw that we use er or ier endings to make the comparative form of adjectives. Let's look at some examples. |
| So first one. Small. The adjective Small becomes the comparative form Smaller by adding er. So er is our suffix here. It creates the comparative form of the adjective. Same thing with the adjective Big. By adding er, the suffix er, we create the comparative form, bigger. Happy is another example. Happy ends in y. So when we make the comparative form, we remove the Y sound and use ier. This is irregular for adjectives that end in Y. So er and ier are suffixes. They change adjectives to a comparative adjective form. |
| Let's look at another similar example of them. When we want to make the superlative form of an adjective. Remember superlative means the most extreme. This can be the most extreme in terms of like the best or the top or the most of something or the other extreme. So the worst, the least good of something. So, when we want to talk about the most extreme versions of adjectives, we use the superlative form. To make the superlative form, we use est or iest. Iest like we saw here is used for adjectives which end in y. |
| Let's look at some examples. Same words as we used here. The adjective small becomes smallest in the superlative form, est is the suffix. The adjective Big becomes biggest, est is the suffix here and finally happy becomes happiest with iest as the suffix, great. So here are just a couple of common examples of the way grammar can be altered, grammar can be changed by using a suffix. |
| Let's look at another one now. Let's look at the suffix ness. Ness. So this suffix can be attached to some words to create nouns. So again, let's look at a few examples and also please be careful. We cannot attach ness to all words to create nouns. It's kind of a trick sometimes native speakers like to play around and attach suffixes to words that typically do not take that suffix. So sometimes native speakers will joke around and make new words this way but there are only a few or I should say, there are limited number of words that we can officially use ness with. These are a few examples. |
| So let's look at again a few adjectives that we can change into nouns by adding ness. Here, Happy again. Happy changes to happiness, the noun form by adding ness. Again, we follow the same y rule. The y changes to an I for adjectives that end in y. So happy adjective becomes noun, happiness by adding the ness suffix. |
| Let's continue on to the next adjective, sad. So sad can become the noun form sadness by adding the suffix ness. Sadness here. One more example is the adjective Weak. We create the noun form Weakness by adding the ness suffix. So these are a few examples where adding a suffix creates a noun. Over here, we changed to the comparative, a superlative form of an adjective. Here, we change a word from an adjective to a noun just by adding a suffix. So these are a few types of suffix. So these are few suffixes where the suffix actually changes the grammar. Okay. |
| Let's look however at some cases where suffix as I talked about before, the suffix can show meaning. So this can be very helpful when you find a new word, a word that you are not familiar with but maybe these can give you some hints. We are going to look at three. The first is actually three suffixes. They are er, or and ar. So these suffixes, these are not the only uses of these suffixes but they are very common. So er, or, and ar, they refer to a person's job or to a person's behaviour. |
| Let's look at some examples. First one, translator. So or is the suffix here. The root is translate. So to translate, to change words from one language to another. So, or shows it's a person who does that, a person who has that role. One more, liar. Here, we see the ar suffix, liar. In other words, a person who lies is a liar. One more example, investor. Here again, we see the or suffix, the root is invest. So one who invests. A person who invests is an investor. Another example, this one with the er suffix is teacher, teacher. So the root here is teach, teacher shows us it is one who teachers, a person who teaches is a teacher. So these suffixes er, or and ar give us hints about someone's behaviour or someone's job. |
| All right. Let's look at the next group of suffixes or the next pair really. We have a-b-l-e able and i-b-l-e. So that's ible. Able and ible. Both of these mean able to be or more simply perhaps can. So, something is possible for example. So these show that the root is something that we can do or it is possible to do, able to do. Examples of this. The word downloadable, downloadable. So the suffix here is able meaning able to be or can and the root is download, download. So this means, something which can be downloaded, downloadable. |
| Another example. Audible. Here we see ible. So here we see in the root place though aud. Aud is just the root. So Aud relates to audio, audio. So audio and can be. Actually, this word means something that is hearable. Hearable. Something that is hearable we say is audible, audible. Okay. One more, reasonable. Reasonable. So it's possible to reason. It's possible to think maybe logically or to understand this. So something that is reasonable is something that we can reason. So it seems we can understand that thing for example. A reasonable price, a reasonable offer. So reason plus able to do something. Each of these shows us that something is possible or we can do that thing. |
| Okay. Last one for this lesson is ion. There are a lot of examples of words that end in ion, ion suffixes refer to actions or to processes, actions or processes. So we have the root plus some action or some process of that root. Let's look at some examples. First one. Hospitalization. So here we have this ion which shows us, it's a process. Hospitalize means to go into the hospital. So to enter the hospital. Hospitalization therefore is the noun form of that. So the hospitalization was handled by the administrative department for example, noun form here. |
| Another example. Common word. Celebration. So, here we see the root is celebrate, to celebrate something. To enjoy something. To have a party. The noun form celebration. So we have ion there which means the action or the process of celebrating. A celebration, noun form. Finally, identification. We have this ion at the ending. And here, we see in the root identify. So the process or the action of identifying something. We use this for like an identification card which allows us to identify other people. Identification is a noun though. So we use ion to refer to actions or to processes. And they relate to the root of the word. So these are just a few examples of the many, many suffixes we can find in English. There are quite a few more and maybe I can introduce some more in a different video but these are just a few, just a handful of some common ones that you can use. |
| So if you have any questions or if you want to try out a suffix or if you just want to leave a comment, please do so in the comments section below the video. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye bye! |
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