Intermediate English - Noun Formation

all right great we are ready to get started i see that we have nirvana with us we have aisha with us amira marina excellent excellent and marina i love your t-shirt yeah great uh excellent so today we are talking about a really interesting topic it's something that i don't i don't teach very often so i myself had to go back and look at the uh rules again and so so it's really it's really an interesting topic and it's really useful and we're going to try to uh introduce some important ideas about how we make words today we're talking about how we make words and we call this noun formation so we're going to talk mostly about nouns but we'll also talk a little bit about other types of words too noun formation and for everybody who is on youtube uh we go live at 8am new york time every friday on youtube and we go live at 8am new york time on facebook every monday so uh we hope to see you at our next lesson also great let's get started so how do we make words there's a few different ways that we could make words um most books or or explanations talk about four main types four main ways that we make new words prefixes these are things that come at the beginning of the word things that we add to the beginning of the word right like if we say um we can say that somebody is bilingual [Music] this is an adjective but we can say marina is bilingual she speaks two languages english and russian bilingual bi is the prefix it means two and we can change this prefix right we can say tri-lingual this means three languages right so um so sometimes we use prefixes to add new meaning or to create new words we also use suffixes suffix suffixes uh suffixes are things that we add to the end of the word and for example ism if we say buddhism hinduism right then these are these are concepts these are ideas these are philosophies religions right so we make this into a noun ism tells us that this is a noun it tells us that we are making a noun from this right and we can have all other kinds of isms too like um environmentalism right uh people who are working to improve the environment we could say terrorism something connected to creating terror right so so uh prefix and suffix things that we add to the beginning and things that we add to the end next conversions conversions are basic this is when we convert a word we have a word that's usually a noun like text and we change it into a verb to text do you remember what to text means it means to send an sms message to send an sms message with your phone this is to text to send a text message and for short people say to text i'll text you or everybody uses this one too to google to google right google is a noun it's a name and people use it as a verb and somebody says oh uh what's the what's the capital of this country or or what's the what's the biggest city in this country and nobody knows and you say google it i'll google it i will google it uh so google can be like a verb right it's a noun originally but then we changed it and made it a verb just by using the rules of verbs with this word that's all we need to do to change it from noun to verb we just start using it like a verb right and so you can do this with lots of of words that's why today's lesson is really important because we're really learning the rules about how native speakers can break the rules right why is it okay when native speakers make mistakes and it's not okay when someone who's learning how to speak a language when they make mistakes right why is when someone who's learning the language makes a mistake it sounds strange but when a native speaker makes a mistake it's natural uh something like this right not always not always but um but there are but why why why does it feel like this because there are special rules about how you can break the rules there are rules about how to break the rules and this is every native speaker uses these rules they don't know it in in they don't know that they do this but there's some kind of rule and usually many jokes in a language are connected to changing the rules or making a mistake with a rule on purpose and um and this will make some kind of joke or other meaning right so if we know how to use how to create new words then we know um how to how to use this uh language a little smarter right so um so this is one example and we'll talk about a lot more examples too another way that we create new words is compound compounds when we when we put two things together it's when we put two things together right so like back ache back ache ache is a is pain it's it's a it's when something hurts you know like there's different kinds of pain right sometimes sometimes it hurts and it's and it's like bigger and smaller like a pulse like pulsating right uh so an ache is kind of like this right it's it's this longer softer pain um and so back ache is like pain in the back right we could say i have an ear ache for example um so these are just two words we put them together and now we have a new word so those are the four main ways that we create new words prefixes suffixes conversion converting the word changing it from a noun to a verb or from a verb to a noun and compounds putting two words together two other two other ways that we do this we don't use them so much is one is called back formation basically we have a noun and this noun has some kind of suffix or in or or prefix it has some part that's added already and we might take away the suffix and make a new kind of word so for example we have the word intuition intuition it's maybe you know this word intuition it's a noun it's uh when you know that something will happen like um maybe maybe maybe you're walking down the street and two men walk past you and you don't think anything but your friend who is a police who was a police officer he has a feeling he he feels like something will happen he knows something is not right right so he has this special feeling he has intuition uh and so we could take the end of this word intuition and we could we could lose the end of the word and say to intuit something to intuit something to make it a verb now so this is another way that sometimes people will do this or for example maybe you know the word enthusiasm enthusiasm this is when someone is very excited has a lot of energy to do it right they're very happy to do something like hey let's speak english today and you're like yes let's go we can say you are enthusiastic to learn english you have a lot of enthusiasm right and so some an english speaker could take the end of this word because it's just a noun enthusiasm and they could cut it and say to enthuse he enthused the crowd for example uh so this is another way that someone might make a new word right even if it's not a real word this is why it's important to know the rules because sometimes this happens with with things that are not real or with a new name of something that we only learn now right um with coronavirus this was a very interesting example because many people needed to start talking about this in english quickly and so we developed many different nicknames and in many in every language now there's some kind of nickname for this right there's covid covid19 corona coronavirus the virus there's a lot of different names right so uh this this is also another way that we make new words through abbreviation right there's the long name and then we just make it short um instead of saying that something is fabulous you could say it's fab people will understand in the in the uk typically you don't say you can say he went to university but you can say you can also say he went to uni uh he went to uni in american english we don't say it like this but in british english this is okay and a very american english one is this one sup this is what's up what's up sup it's the same yeah so again this is just like if you don't know this if you if you don't speak like this or then you probably don't understand what this word is because it's not a real word it's just a word that people use to shorten a phrase that and everyone understands this phrase in this situation so it sounds similar just sounds like someone very quickly said what's up sup right uh okay so these are some different ways that we make different words all right i see gigi has joined us on here great so now um whenever you want to turn your mic on you can turn it on and answer but i'm going to ask some questions and and you can answer when you want so prefixes if we have the prefix mono what does this mean for example if i say that he is monolingual excuse me that means it's the one just one only one yeah so what about the word monopoly what is this about what does monopoly mean do you know this one this is the only producer uh on the market who own uh all markets for example this is a producer of uh um i don't know of medicine for example and the the only producer of the market yeah aisha do you understand it's like a company that controls the whole market so for example for example in in the united states government now they're talking about facebook and instagram and these companies that they're so big that other companies cannot compete with them and so this is bad for the economy for the country because we need competition to stimulate the economy so uh so usually when a company becomes this big the government has some laws they're called anti-monopoly laws and the company must break into smaller pieces for example so monopoly it's the it's the one player on the market um that we also have the verb to monopolize to monopolize which means to control uh and and it's not only about business um we in american english we use this in a phrase about uh maybe maybe you speak with people and and there's one person who always speaks more than everyone else and doesn't let other people speak this person monopolizes the conversation mm-hmm marina monologue that's monologue good example yeah and what's a monologue when one speaker is the only speaker without conversation without dialogues exactly and dialogue is two participants in in conversation yeah exactly great okay so what about uni then because mono means one and unit also means one right like maybe united maybe something united okay so it's uh it's many parts that are one yeah uh-huh yeah if we say that uh if we say that an instrument or or a tool is universal what does that mean it's suitable for everything yeah yes so great okay what about quad this prefix quad it means four oh for example um for example i ha if i have two and then i make it four this means that i double it to double to triple to quadruple quadrocycle quadricycle with four wheels exactly chris what about unicorn unicorn has one horn yeah but why uni here the prefix uni or it's not prefix probably this is the root this is a perfect it's a prefix it's a prefix it's about one horn ah yeah sure yeah uh-huh um quad yeah uh what else there's some muscles that we call quads like if you stretch your on the top of your of your legs here these muscles are called quads the four muscles that are there um yeah there's a lot of uses like if we talk about geometry in geometry if we have a shape that has four sides this is a quadrilateral so the word for um next what about on unusual vice versa and uncomfortable uncomfortable is a good example so what is predictable unpredictable good one it's something negative yeah it means not good and the next thing right uncomfortable this one has a prefix and a suffix right on imagine a bull so if on is the prefix and able abul is the suffix then what is imagine the main part of the word and so we add prefixes and suffixes we add them to roots right um great okay next non this is another way for us to say yeah no no uh sorry say that again no one no one oh this is this is the prefix none uh-huh none yeah and and about pronunciation it's it's non american english if we try to make it closer to british english then it'll be non-on like with not not uh it's different than no right it does not not and non do not have the o sound they have the o sound not so uh next pre what does pre mean before earlier like prefix like to prepare something previous previous good and uh preview preview this is a noun right a noun a verb both to preview something and to watch a preview or to see a preview and then after we can say post right like when we talked about education post it means after like when we talked about education we talked about post doctoral programs after you have your doctorate then you can continue and do other programs they're called post doctoral programs right after um some sometimes uh if if you're in a big company in a big corporation then you might have a a pre-meeting meeting and then you have the meeting and then you might have a post-meeting meeting so that you can be ready for what happens in the meeting and then you can plan what about what happened in the meeting afterwards the pre-meeting meeting the meeting and the post-meeting meeting pre-intermediate level re-interviewing this good example okay so we have pre and post what about malty right multicolored multi-colored good uh yeah to multitask to do many tasks at the same time [Music] i can't do that uh some people say we live in a universe and some people say we live in a multiverse that it's not one that there are many um great okay and we have anti or anti both pronunciations are correct anti or anti like antibiotic sorry like antibiotic antibiotic yeah exactly type of medicine against so anti means um in christian religion they have antichrist like the person who's the fake or the or the one who's against they have um what else i think for skin they have anti what is it called antioxidants no no this is this is with uh mine what am i thinking about ant-oxidant cocktails yeah anti-oxygen and antioxidant so we have we have lots of words like this um in a story we might have the anti-hero the anti-hero it's like uh bad guy who you connect with in the story because he's the hero you know like a story about a bad guy and he's the hero but he's bad so he's an anti-hero also in a story we have a word that we like to use a lot about literature or about a film or a story uh it could be anti-climactic and what this means is usually in the story you have the beginning and then it gets a little more interesting and a little more interesting and then there's the climax the peak the peak the climax the top part right and but some stories they they just never go to a very to a really interesting place they make you think that something really interesting is going to happen and then nothing this moment this is called anti-climactic like everybody's waiting for something to happen and then it no it just doesn't happen um so yeah great all right let's go to suffixes we have ism we talked about ism already and then we have e r and o r and these tell us about a person who does something right the do were of something so we can really take any word and then add er and it makes it a person who does it teacher painter yeah anything really like yeah i i don't know um any verb can be made into a noun like this right singer like for example to wave your hand waver when you're very good a person who waves something will be a waiver uh a good a good 21st century example hater follower follower subscriber right and that brings us back to something that we didn't talk about in prefixes insta it means instant immediate right now right insta and we we use this for example instagram it used this in its name to say that it's happening immediately right instantly and that you're sending this instantly great okay next we have the suffixes e-r-o-r these tell us about people nouns but we also have the suffix e-n pronounced n and this helps us make verbs for example if i want to make something shorter then i will shorten it to shorten short and then e in shorten this means to make it shorter uh if i want to make something wider then i can widen it if i want to make something higher or taller i can heighten heighten it if i want to make something deeper in this in the ocean or something underground deeper then i can deepen it right so em where is this is the verbs right these are very shorten to shorten right to shorten so another way that we can make verbs is with the suffix phi right like we have the word electric and electricity and we have the verb to electrify and magnify sorry or quantify yeah great and then the next one we also have eyes some process of changing something right so but it's a noun sorry it's a verb it's a verb um for example minimize minimize maximize [Music] memorize good uh-huh and uh note that i have written it with this letter z zed in british english many of these words will be with s right for this suffix but in american english it's usually written with zee or zed in british english um great next we have able or ibble impossible unbelievable unbelievable right adorable adorable that's a good one uh-huh adorable approachable sorry unfortunate affordable i think earlier we had unimaginable we could also say inconceivable inconceivable this means that we cannot imagine it we cannot think of this idea you can to conceive it's like about um it's about like having a child like you can't give birth to this idea you can't create this idea inconceivable yeah uh great okay next lee this suffix usually we add this suffix to an adjective and it makes an adverb right like quick quickly [Music] this is not an adverb right this is an adjective so it's not always an adverb when we see l y but l y can be a suffix in in most situations and the last one about suffixes is proof what does this mean if i say that it's waterproof what does that mean yes defense resistant withstand yes aisha it will withstand this thing and marina yes it's uh defense against this thing durable durable yeah who is this sorry amira what is this it resists it resists something exactly so waterproof waterproof what else actually i don't i don't hear this police police usually police usually wear a bulletproof vest bulletproof vest we have the makeup as well waterproof that means you can uh take a shower and then stay there yeah great yeah you might also say for example you might have a fireproof box with important documents or a fireproof safe [Music] um but basically if you say proof after it then it's protection against this thing right like this thing should not should not touch it should not hurt it sometimes you'll hear people say things like accident proof like an accident cannot happen or uh some other some other words like this or um or for example about the economy they might say recession proof when when someone's talking about their business or their business model they might say this is a recession-proof business model like what does it mean recession recession it it's when the economy is bad and uh the economy is becoming worse it's not uh depression but it's like a small depression you understand like in like in 2008 mhm yeah the global economy had a recession um a financial crisis let's let's say that recession is a financial crisis economic crisis uh great okay so we talked about prefixes we talked about suffixes next let's talk about conversions we we spoke about to text what does it mean to text to send messages yeah on the phone on the cell phone only chris can i text on my computer or i type do you have windows or mac or windows then no [Laughter] on on mac you you can send an sms from your phone using your computer uh i mean i'm typing i can't say that i'm texting it's not the same okay but it's typing that are you tasty or something like that i'll text you it usually means by phone yeah and if you're if it's by email then we say i i will email you and if it's facebook messenger or or whatsapp or instagram or something like this then we say i'll message you or we say i'll im or dm instant message or direct message something about message okay and if it's a and if it's by phone then it's text message but we don't say message all the time we just say text yeah and if someone says i will send you a text this is an sms on your phone okay we talked about google download download was a verb and then we made it a noun to talk about the thing that was downloaded right so today we might say uh like i don't know join this program and get 10 free downloads here we use the word download as a as a noun a thing it's but we don't know which thing it is it's just the thing which we download which we use the verb so it's about the verb right but we've changed the verb to a noun next these are fun and you probably didn't think about it before but for example an if and if the word if we know what if means but let's imagine that we let's imagine it like this and if right like the word if itself we could have one if and we could have two ifs right so if we think like this then and if is just the word if one of the word if and if we can say the same with a definite a maybe a probably a yes a no i asked him i invited him to my party and he gave me a no i invited him to my party he gave me a maybe he gave me a maybe when when you want someone to when you're speaking to someone you you say you have to do this there there can be no reason why you do not do this no situation nothing no reason why you cannot do this no ifs ands or buts no ifs ands or buts this is a phrase that we use no ifs ands or buts it's a standard phrase and it's using all of these words as nouns right in russian we can say too much if if someone don't want to do something and you say if i can or something you can answer it too much if just do it yeah yeah exactly so so we can use these words uh like this and the same so we're really just looking at some basic rules about making words and using words right because you can do this with anything let's let's try the same phrase with a sound instead of a word i invited him to my party and he gave me a we can say that i might say that to my friend i invite him to my party and he just gave me a [Music] and so what did i do i just made the sound into a noun right because i put the article a before it he gave me a so this thing becomes the becomes a noun and we can do that with any word or phrase or sound or look or yeah great next the ups and downs of something we've we've talked about this phrase before pluses and minuses pros and cons right so up and down are not usually nouns they're not usually things that we that we look at right not one up and two ups but in this context in this situation we're talking about the positive things and the negative things and we're just calling them ups and downs right so here we've changed them to nouns because they have a different meaning than usual all right the last example from conversions uh is has anyone seen my picasso has anyone seen my picasso imagine that you have that you have so much money you don't know what to do and you have lots of famous paintings all over your house one is by pablo picasso one day you come into your living room and you see it's not there and you find some someone in your house you say has anyone seen my picasso so we're taking the name of the person who painted the painting and we're using it as the noun to talk about this painting right and we can use it with any famous name or person or or thing like that uh you hear you hear this a lot in american tv shows right now well you hear this a lot in american tv shows with um designer brands of bags and shoes like there's a famous shoe designer jimmy choo and uh i think that's who it is i'm not big on fashion but you can hear people say in in shows where are my where are my jimmy choos oh i couldn't find my jimmy choo so i had to wear this for example so the name of the designer is used to talk about the shoes um great okay the next category is compounds when we put two words together so we have we talked about back ache rock band so is this is this word about rock or is it about band that band uh only playing uh a rock exactly so it's about band and rock adds more information to the word band so the when we have compound nouns the last word is the real noun the last word is the real noun all of the words before it are like adjectives they just add more information about this last noun so school bus this is a bus it's not a school and school tells us more information about bus right so there's an interesting rule about compound nouns about 95 of the time sorry not 100 but about 95 of the time uh you should stress a compound noun on the first syllable rock band school bus english teacher this is my house key not my car key for example so we usually stress the first syllable of the compound noun it's not important it's not important if it's two words if it's one word or if it's hyphenated if it has a line between a hyphen a dash all of these things can be compound nouns and they all have the same rule usually you pronounce the first syllable you stress the first syllable so backache earache okay here we have a noun phrase or just a a phrase of words so we can take a phrase and we can make this phrase a noun we can make it one thing what we need to do is add a hyphen between each word stick dash hyphen stick hyphen in hyphen the hyphen mud and so all of these words together make one thing hey uh can you give me that stick in the mud uh-huh what is that crease it's a stick like a a piece of a tree for example stick and it's in the mud wet dirt mud yeah a stick in the mud this can be one noun because we can not just stick like a noun but stick in the mud you could say i have seen so many stick in the muds making it one so it's like one experience of this connection of stick and mud right if you wanted to talk about it normally you would say there are many sticks in the mud right it's all different words but here we put all of the words together with hyphens and it makes it one concept one idea like one name basically um i use this a lot actually i i love using this because you can say any phrase and make it a thing um let's okay let's take the phrase hello how are you doing can you say that marina hello how are you doing i like your hello how are you doing better than my hello how are you doing [Laughter] do you understand we just made hello how are you doing we made that a noun right so that's that's what we're doing here and we would we would put a hyphen between each word or or we might put it in quotes right we might say your hello how are you doing is better than my hello how are you doing it's more it's more understandable in columns yeah and and here it's about words that we said right so quotes is probably better but uh so it's probably not the best example but sometimes it's not about exact words right uh great so next we have a 20-story building so for example if we have numbers then we can make this into a noun by using a hyphen a line and then the noun so 20 story this building has 20 stories right or let's let's use book you could say it's a 200 page book a 200 hyphen page 200 hyphen page a 200 page book right so 200 page it's like an adjective so we're using the number and the noun like an adjective about book and we can use many of those together john gave me his 200 page 50 year old president signed copy of this book for example and so all of those phrases could be together like one one adjective phrase that describes this noun so it makes like one noun phrase one big phrase with all the words together to give us a special noun right great okay so we talked about a lot today uh making new words in different ways and different examples of parts of words maybe you have some questions for me now here at the end of our lesson all right sometimes we can see some words that root it's not suffix or prefix and sometimes difficult we recognize no how can i recognize it's a root or it's a prefix or suffix right it's this is this is uh sometimes difficult especially for example lee right l y this is sometimes we don't understand if it's a suffix or if it's the real word like with friendly um there's not really one rule to recognize this but you should when you see these prefixes and suffixes you can usually think that it is a prefix or suffix it's not it there's not a lot of situations where it where where it's not a prefix or suffix yeah but unfortunately i don't know any better rule than that yeah yeah okay chris you said friendly this is the all word is root friendly or lee this is the suffix is the suffix but it makes an adjective not an adverb because the root is friend and so friend is a noun and then we have friendly as an adjective and then if you wanted to make it an adverb then it would be friendly but people don't usually use that word in real life um so but but usually adverbs have l y at the end right and that's why it's confusing because this is the one this is one of those times when it's different [Music] okay great thank you so much for your questions and for coming to our lesson today every friday at 8 a.m new york time we go live on youtube and every monday at 8 a.m new york time we go live on facebook and i am looking forward to seeing everyone on monday at 8 a.m new york time on facebook have a wonderful weekend and thank you so much amira nirvana marina gigi and aisha for joining me today thank you thank you for a t-shirt thank you

Channel: English With Kris Amerikos

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Id: bWFHl6_2c7M

Length: 54min 45sec (3285 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021