Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 October 18

= October 18 =

List of Germanic roots in English
I see that we have the article List of Greek and Latin roots in English, which I will be using to help my freshman IELTS classes. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have a comparable article for Germanic roots, and I'm having trouble finding a comparable resource elsewhere. I remember using one in middle school, though there's no way I could get ahold of that book now.

Does anyone have a good list of common Germanic roots in English? This article was helpful enough to remind me that I should teach "be-," "fore-," "-ful," "-ly/-lic/-like," "-ness," and "-some" but I'm not sure I have the time to make my own list.

Thanks, Ian.thomson (talk) 05:50, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Of course, most Germanic roots in English take the form of familiar English words, which would not need to be taught to native English speakers in middle school. Marco polo (talk) 16:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * @Marco, IELTS is for non-native speakers at university level. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 16:51, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Ian, it is unclear to me what you are requesting exactly, although I might be able to offer some suggestions. First, all native English words come from Germanic roots, since English is a Germanic language.  So, basically, any comprehensive list of English roots will just be a large vocabulary book.  If you want a brief list of the most core words you can look at a Swadesh list, for example, the https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Germanic_Swadesh_lists, but this is not really helpful in teaching ESL, except that students should be familiar with all the words on that list.


 * There's also Skeat's etymological dictionary, which is a classic, and in the public domain, as here at google books. That book is set up like an English dictionary, but it gives etymologies.  It doesn't give a list, though.


 * There is also Calvert Watkins' American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, which gives the etymology, whether Greek, Latin, native Germanic, or otherwise for most common English words. It is only 200 pages and has good indices, although again, it is not quite a list, and the entries are alphabetized according to the PIE root, which is not really helpful for students not interested in linguistics.  If what you are really at is a list of roots, then you will run into things like stone showing up as stan in words like Stanford and house showing up in husband and hussy, which literally derives from housewife. μηδείς (talk) 17:19, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The last sentence in particular is more along the lines of what I'm looking for. Prefixes and suffixes.  Something like List of Greek and Latin roots in English, but with Germanic roots.  The reasons I'm looking for a pre-made list are time (hoping to get this to them at some point this semester), and I'm more likely to focus on obscure roots that none of them will use (instead of dead common stuff like "-ly" or "-ness").  Ian.thomson (talk) 01:28, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * (ec) Okay, Ian, so then what you are looking for is a list of common and especially productive English suffixes; things like -ship, -dom, -bury, -ing -ham, -ton, -ling, -scape, -ster, -wards, -wise -ful, -worth, -less, and even -worthy. as well as back-, ready- under-, out- and so forth. Explaining disembiggen might be quite fun. I'll look around. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, thank you. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:51, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * See the relevant lists in Category:Lists of English words of foreign origin.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 01:39, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * This website has a long list of prefixes, suffixes, and roots, although it concentrates on Greek and Latin and omitts things like mid- and -long. We also have our own list of English prefixes and list of English suffixes, although the latter is a redirect to suffix and it is very incomplete. μηδείς (talk) 02:15, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I just googled "list of English prefixes" and got all sorts of sites of varying quality. Unfortunately most of them are highly classico-centric, and none of the ones I looked at stuck out as being particularly good in all aspects.  You see a lot of omissions, again.  For example, very few lists point out that un- (which is native English) can mean both "not" (untrustworthy) and "in reverse" (untie).  I think your best bet may be compiling your own list from various sites, although that can be a slog.


 * Googling "complete list of English affixes" is pretty good. This site http://www.affixes.org/u/index.html is very complete, the problem being that the lists are indexed alphabetically (you have to click "u" to see under- un- uber-) but those lists seem very good, even if -ham and -ton are omitted.  If you wanted to cut and paste you could omit a lot of the exotic ones, such as abdomino-. I think I'll leave it there, since there's a surfeit of examples. μηδείς (talk) 02:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. At the very least, I should be able to direct them to prefixsuffix.com and affixes.org. Ian.thomson (talk) 06:09, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

We should distinguish between "living suffixes" and others. -ness is a living suffix (one which can be added without limitation) that turns an adjective into a noun (e.g. "nice", "niceness"). -ly turns an adjective into an adverb (e.g. "polite", "politely".  -ing turns a verb into a noun (e.g. the "makings" of a scandal).   -er, -or or -our is the suffix of agency (e.g. "save", "saviour").   Are there any more?92.31.95.81 (talk) 11:52, 23 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the term is "productive" to describe suffixes (and other morphemes) which can be freely added to words to make valid new words. -- Jayron 32 11:59, 23 October 2015 (UTC)