Improve My Vocabulary! Mastering the English language
Trying to get to grips with the English language can be a rather intimidating affair although it should be noted that learning any new language is a challenge. As baffling as it may seem at first glance, the English language is a logical and structured language which means that if you are able to readily come to grasp and have an excellent understanding of the fundamental rules which are the foundation for it, you will make excellent progress in a short space of time.
Unlike other languages such as German or French, nouns within English are always neuter, which means that they do not have a gender, which is often a complaint made of German and French by long suffering students, struggling to memorize the seemingly random and arbitrary allocation of gender to each noun.
As touched upon earlier within the article, the English language consists of a number of basic rules and concepts, and given that English is a Romantic language (i.e. originates from, and is influenced by Latin) this means that a familiarity with “root words” as well as various suffixes and prefixes will help you more readily understand words that you may not have came across before.Don’t worry, as this is a technique which is used by native English speakers as well, in order to help decipher those words that are beyond reach.
In the context of the English language, there are approximately 100 prefixes (prefixes are attached to the beginning of a word.) Whilst Latin is a long dead language, its influence can be seen quite clearly within English, although there is no need to be proficient in Latin in order to achieve success with English! A firm grasp of the prefixes and suffixes will be more than sufficient for your purposes.
In actual fact, the word “prefix” itself is actually a prefix itself! The part “pre” means and denotes before, whilst the word “fix” means to attach or latch onto. However, prefixes and suffixes are not and cannot be simply attached to every single word.
When you read through a particular source, make sure you underline words such as happy, harmony etc and then be on the look for their antonyms. An antonym is whenever a word takes on the opposite meaning by the attachment of either a prefix or suffix.
Happy: means contentment and joy.
Unhappy: means sadness and despair.
The prefix in this case is the “un” and unhappy is the antonym of the word happy.