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"I think in English this never happens as unlike Hebrew, I can't think of a letter than can act as a meaningful prefix." a on its own can be a few different pr
by jerf 5y ago
"I think in English this never happens as unlike Hebrew, I can't think of a letter than can act as a meaningful prefix."
a on its own can be a few different prefixes: https://www.etymonline.com/word/a-?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_24553 https://www.etymonline.com/word/a-?ref=etymonline_crossrefer... Many of the examples cited in that will strike a modern English speaker as simply being the word, such as "amethyst" which was news to me, but we have moral -> amoral, sexual -> asexual, and a few others.
I certainly agree I've never thought of this in the context of a word game, as opposed to the s suffix which is almost mandatory in Boggle, for instance.
- drorco 5y agoTrue. "A" does play a similar role. The thing with "A" is that there are relatively few words where it could be applied, while in Hebrew, almost every noun and verb I can think of can have a "ב" prefix.
- jerf 5y agoI agree totally. I saw this more as an interesting "natural" word trivia challenge than any disagreement on my part.