This is an all-ears English podcast, episode 2250, Silly Suffixes Part 2, when creativity causes problems.
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Today we come back to our series on suffixes in English, and we learn about the suffix Ness.
What are some big mistakes that we've heard with this suffix?
Find out today and how to avoid them.
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All right, Aubrey. Hey, how's it going today?
How are you? I'm great. Hi, Lindsay.
How are you? Good. Glad to be on the mic.
Would you consider yourself a creative person?
I'm actually not a very creative person.
I believe that. I actually don't believe that.
Compare in comparison to Jessica.
She creates blown glass.
She's very artistic. And it's always been shocking.
My dad is an artist. You can see his paintings surrounding me here and my brother.
But I am creative when it comes to writing.
Like I've written a few books, but that's visual.
That's not so much. But it's a very narrow definition of creativity.
I think creativity can be a lot of things.
It can be a way of thinking, right?
Your thought patterns, your writing, your physical art.
It could be even in movement.
A dancer is creative. Wouldn't you say creating new emotions?
Not a dancer. Yeah. It's true though.
Everyone's creative in their own way.
What about you Lindsay?
How do you express your creativity?
Um, so I also would probably say I'm not creative.
But if I think about it more, I think I'm creative in the way.
I think about my meditation and spiritual practice actually.
And like thinking about life on different levels and different kind of realms of reflection.
I would call that creative.
Just not your traditional creative creativity.
Yeah, I'm creative in the way I view the world and my spirituality.
Absolutely. Well, this came up recently.
It's very interesting because first of all, you cannot be creative when it comes to suffixes.
Unfortunately, this is part two of a two part series because suffixes in English can often throw us off.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we can't just assume that the suffix is always going to look the same.
And this was based on a mistake that we heard, right?
Aubrey? Exactly. Yes, I heard a student make the mistake.
They said, this helps me express my creativeness.
So they're thinking that they can take the adjective creative and add an ESS to make a noun, which often that is the case, right?
That's usually the pattern.
But sometimes instead of any SS, we add ITY.
So in this case, you would say this helps me express my creativity.
Right. And by the way, don't forget guys, the only way we get better is by actually making those mistakes.
Right? Aubrey, no one gets better by sitting back and listening to other people make mistakes.
So we're praising this student that we interacted with for making that mistake because that is the path to connection in English.
It's making absolutely right.
This student was practicing speaking English.
You're going to make mistakes, not a big deal.
But as you recognize them and improve, that is how we improve grammar.
And as you just have conversations without stressing about it, that's how we improve fluency.
Love it, so good, so good.
All right, do we have another episode to send our listeners back to?
Yeah, guys, don't miss part one.
Scroll up 2246. Silly suffix is part one.
Don't let ION throw you off.
Yeah. And today we're talking about the suffix, NESS, and ESS.
Yes. And so let's get into this suffix.
I mean, what do we need to know about it?
What does it do to a word?
Yeah. So often we do add NESS to adjectives to create a noun, but the problem is it's not always, right?
A lot of adjectives break this or a lot of nouns break this rule.
So for example, we can't add NESS to creative and said, we add the ITY like we're sharing.
And today we'll share another vocabulary to watch out for.
Some common mistakes we see with these nouns.
Yes, okay, cool. So let's give some examples of when it can be added, right?
Yes. So for example, the word alert, Aubrey.
What would make it a noun?
So I'm a little bit. And ESS, right?
Oh, that's nice. So you might say, I didn't sleep well last night, which explains my lack of mental alertness.
Hopefully that's not the case for any of you out there.
Sometimes I do have insomnia, but ever since I got to Idaho, I've been sleeping like a baby.
Oh, geez. Wow. Good. Yeah.
If you have symptoms as colder, it's all the weather.
It's all that night here.
100%. It is like sleep temperature really matters when it comes to not being awake all night.
Here's another sentence.
Travelers to this area should practice extra alertness and take maybe take precautions.
Or something, I would say.
Right? Take precautions.
Yes. So if we think about this suffix, any SS, right?
It means state condition quality.
So it's used with an adjective to say something about the state or condition of being that adjective, right?
So for example, redness means the quality of being red.
So often this is the case.
A lot of adjectives follow this pattern.
First thing we want to have, just point out, watch out for spelling mistakes because words that end with why, like happy when we add NESS, the why becomes an eye.
So happiness is spelled I, NESS.
Yes. That happens with a lot every time it ends with a why.
Yes. I love that. The interesting thing about NESS is that the thing that makes us extra tricky is that I think we often add this, we invent new words by adding NESS, the nature of being some way.
Exactly. So that's what we're talking about today.
So for example, right? Because you can't always add NESS.
Yeah. But can you think of one that I thought of, I hear people sometimes say absurdness instead of absurdity.
To say that something's absurd, you might say, I'm baffled by the absurdness of these rules.
I know I've heard this. Native speakers make this mistake as well.
But you should add the ITY.
I'm baffled by the absurdity of these rules.
Yes. Or even just, I think you can say this, the quality of being, let's say, from the US, being American or other people are also American, from South America, of course, American NESS.
I believe we can even say that.
So that's what I mean is of inventing kind of sort of creating your own word.
That's a good point. That's what a slang thing we do, where we add NESS to create this adjective, well, a noun, my Americanness.
But that's very slang, right?
It's very slang. Very slang.
And we, it's tricky because when we are writing or speaking more formally, we can't create it like that.
We can't just add NESS all the time and expect it to make sense.
Totally. So it's kind of different things we're talking about here.
We're getting pretty high level and pretty nuanced here, which we love to do in all our English.
But it's very different from when you say something like cleanliness, mindfulness, forgetfulness.
These are all standard, you can say these, you can write them.
But when you start saying things like American NESS or any nationality or any nature of your personality, it starts to be slangy.
And I would avoid writing that, right?
Yes, exactly. A good point.
Let's share one other example.
I've also heard this mistake, acceptable NESS, right?
So you might say like, social acceptability of these actions when it should be acceptability, right?
Social acceptability of many actions has changed over the years.
Yeah, and it's hard. But we've just finished telling our listeners, people invent these in a slangy way.
And why couldn't you invent that and make that work?
Acceptable NESS, but no.
Acceptability, there's a gut feeling too that we have to get.
Which means it comes from just exposure to the language.
Right? Absolutely. The more you're taking in English, some of these will just sound right or wrong to you.
So yes, sometimes we can be creative with slaying an informal speech, but when maybe you're at work, maybe you're speaking a little more formally.
And often even with informal speech, a lot of these words, we can't just add NESS because there's no slaying involved, right?
When you're saying acceptability, there's no slaying here.
You just, you know, you can't say acceptable NESS because you're using slaying, that's just incorrect grammar.
Yeah, for sure. So some things we just have to learn.
Yeah. Nice. All right. So moving into the why, do we want to say anything else about the why?
I'll bring you touched on it a little bit.
We need to give a couple of very brief things here.
It's all about word origin, right?
So we have all these Latin suffixes in English.
And they tend to go on Latin and Greek roots.
And then native suffixes like less NESS hood are what's called permissive and can also attach to these.
So that's why it seems like there are exceptions.
It's all about where the root comes from.
There are bound roots and Latin roots.
And it gets really complicated.
If you guys want to do a deep dive into grammar about suffixes and prefixes and roots, there's a lot there.
But it just sort of helps you to know that like most of this is following rules based on where the root is from.
Yeah. So if you love etymology, if you love linguistics, if you want to do that deep dive, you can do it.
And you can find a reason.
But most people, and myself included, I'll speak for myself, I want to connect.
I just want to connect with people.
Right? And so I will try to listen to as much of the languages I can.
Spanish, for example, when I'm learning a language, just listen as much as I can and listen to what I hear.
Do I hear it in multiple places for multiple people?
That's probably safe to use that.
Right? Yes. Exactly. And we know you guys want to avoid mistakes, but even more importantly, we know you're wanting to connect in English.
So this is hopefully giving you sort of an alertness about this issue, these common mistakes.
But like you said, Lindsay, taking in English is the best way you're going to start recognizing and hearing these correctly, so that you can then use them correctly.
Love it. Well, let's dive into a role play.
I'm excited for listeners to see these really come to life.
So today in this role play, we are discussing a controversial issue, which we've been getting into those controversial issues in the last few weeks, right?
A hot summer. Exactly. Right?
You want to get us started here?
Yes. And to keep in mind, when I first wrote this role play, it was more of like a casual conversation.
And then I realized all of these words are quite formal.
And so I sort of changed it to a discussion about a controversial issue that would be you would start using words like this that don't come up as often in casual conversation.
Love it. I'll start going to push our level higher than in that case.
Exactly. Good. All right.
I'm glad you brought this up.
I'm kind of embarrassed by my lack of alertness that it was even an issue.
Oh, no worries. I only just heard about it on the news.
I'm often appalled by the absurdity of things I hear on the news.
It's tempting just to avoid it.
I kind of think the lack of social acceptability is surprising.
What do you think? I agree.
I agree. Yeah, high level.
Right? Very high level.
And you can see how like as I'm trying to fit, you know, alertness and absurdity and acceptability into a conversation, we don't all, we don't use these words as commonly.
When we're just chatting over coffee about our day.
But they do come up as we're getting deeper about topics, talking about something we heard on a podcaster in the news.
Then we do use these words.
And sometimes you just want to elevate your speech a little bit.
This is a good example of it.
Maybe before this, we've got to maybe gossiping or something or talk about everyday things like the weather.
You're more casual. And then getting into a current event or something important, you're going to set up a bit more straight and use bigger words and more formal words.
So that's kind of what we're doing here, right?
Yes. So let's go through this.
I first said, kind of embarrassed by my lack of alertness that this was even an issue.
So this has happened to me where someone will bring up something they heard on the news or something in a podcast.
And I'm like, I had not even heard about this.
I'm so glad you're sharing with me.
Because sometimes it's a little embarrassing because I don't watch the news that often.
Yeah. This is very appropriate for me, this role player.
I'm like, sometimes I'm tempted just to avoid it.
So I don't have to think about all of these frustrating issues.
It's hard. I'm also trying to read the news last before bed.
But if you listen to the news ever, this would be the week to do it.
Because this is the week that all the big Supreme Court decisions come out.
It's always the last week in June.
So just a side point, big week on the political scene and in the Supreme Court, the US passport.
Lots of you guys, it was a few weeks ago.
For us, we're recording at the end of June.
So yes, it's a big week in the news for us.
Great point. Good point.
All right. So then I said, you said, I'm often appalled by the absurdity of things I hear on the news.
It's tempting just to avoid it.
Yes. Yes. So that's where you would use this noun absurdity.
The absurdity of something, meaning you think it's absurd.
You think it's unreasonable or crazy.
And then what did I say, Aubrey?
You said, I kind of think the lack of social acceptability is surprising.
So you can see this is, I didn't really share what the controversial topic is that we were just but clearly has something to do with a lack of social acceptability, which this is often how I hear this noun.
It's used. It's often collocated with the social acceptability of something.
Interesting. I like it.
Guys, add these to your repertoire.
These are very high level words here that you can pull out when it comes to just a slightly elevated conversation, right?
Yes. And as a takeaway, you guys using the correct suffix will up your game.
Love it. These mistakes happen a ton.
And keep in mind native speakers make these mistakes as well as language learners.
So don't stress about it.
Very common mistakes both in part one, that IOM suffix and also the Ness and ESS.
But the more you're immersing yourself in English, the more you'll just, some of them will just sound right.
Awesome. And I love that expression as a takeaway up your game, by the way.
That's a fantastic word.
Improved. It'll make you better.
So guys, hit that follow button to get the next episode of All Years English.
And Aubrey, thanks for bringing this topic today.
Good stuff. Yeah. Awesome.
Thanks, Lindsay. See you next time.
All right. Talk to you very soon.
Bye. All years English.
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