How to Memorize Words Faster Using Morphemes

[Katrink]

Hi everyone! 

In this post, I’m going to explain such notion as a morpheme. It is not so challenging as it sounds. On top of that, understanding morphemes, you will broaden a word stock. Every language consists of words, so it is quite natural that people studying foreign language attempt to memorize as many words as they can. They write words everywhere in a notebook, personal vocabulary, small pieces of paper and so on. Frankly speaking, there is a simple secret on how to memorize new foreign words. If to use new words in everyday life, so the process of memorizing will go faster. In Russian language we pay a great attention to a word-building.

Morpheme is a small word element. We define such main morphemes: root, prefixes, inflexions. It is definitely, classification of morphemes is large, but these ones are the primary. A root is a major part f the word. Sometimes a word can have two roots. A prefix is a small part, which is situated before he root. And an inflexion is placed after the root. But you can ask, how can I use morphemes to broaden a word stock.

I will show you this, on one example. Let’s take a word “перепрыгивать” – that is for overleap or over jump. The verb consists of four morphemes : пере-прыг-ива-ть. Each morpheme has its meaning. For instance: “пере-летать” – overfly, “пере-скакивать” -  overleap, “пере-плывать” – swim over, “пере-ползать ” – creep. We can see that every word begins with a prefix –пере, and it means to overcome something.

Here is another group of words: “от-прыгивать” – jump back,

“от-летать” – fly off,  “от-скакивать” – rebound, “от-плывать” – swim off,  “от-ползать” – creep away. Now you see that if to change a prefix, so a word gets new meaning. 

Speaking about inflexions… so they are mainly denoted by grammar.  Thus, we can understand a tense by verb inflexion or case.  Well, I want to say that if you know a basic word, you can change its meaning by adding required prefix. Also, I have compiled several common prefixes, that may be useful for learners.

- С indicates process of movement from up to down or from different sides. For example,

Спрыгнуть – jump down 

Сбегать – run away

Сходиться - gather

Спускаться – go down

Съезжаться – move in together

Prefix –до  indicates end of process. For example,

Дочитать  - read to the end

Доплыть  - swim to the finish

Доехать  - to reach

Finishing, in this article, I demonstrated how you can change general meaning of a verb, using prefixes. It is obviously, there are lots of prefixes, used in nouns, verbs, etc. If you are interested in this theme, make simple online research and discover more. The major idea is to memorize basic verbs and change their meaning, adding prefixes.