Tuesday 8 November 2011

Affix of evil



English is a language awash with prefixes to alter meaning (overpaid, counter-productive, anti-war) and suffixes to change word class (happy, happiness). Suffixes can also alter meaning, such as the very useful -ish ("What time do you get off? - About sixish"). I always like teaching this suffix as students identify its vagueness with the actual name for the language they're studying: Engl, ish.

Many languages, for example Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia, use internal affixes, or infixes, adding to the middle of a word to alter meaning. In English we can use tmesis -  inserting lexical items into words to alter meaning, most notably in the wonderful adjectives "fan-bloody-tastic" and "abso-fucking-lutely". I wonder if it's just the beautiful rhythm of these extended adjectives which leaves, to my knowledge, few other examples if this lexical building in English.

P.S. "diddly" is not an affix, internal or otherwise.

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