I read a post yesterday based on Steve the Vagabond and Silly Linguist's FB page about the adjective suffix <-y> in English. I highly recommend joining his page if you're a word nerd with a sense of humor. Anyway, he was making the connection that English, contrary to its perception that it descended from a Romance language, is actually very much a Germanic language. One of his many pieces of evidence was the evolution of the <-ig> adjective suffix as in: <sunny>, from German <sonnig> and Dutch <zonnig>. The pronunciation of <-ig> at the time was more of an /i:/ (long e, if you're not familiar with *IPA symbols), so it makes sense that it was Anglicized to <-y.>, but it really obscured the visual connection that I made today.
I thought, “Oh! Now it looks like the element <-ic> meaning ‘having the characteristic of.’” I had taken a Real Spelling class about the Latinate <-ic> suffix, studying words such as <titanic>, <chronic>, and <athletic>, so I was primed to realize this connection. It was an “aha!” moment. I've seen the element <-ic> and connected it to the French <-ique>, but I had not considered the English <-y> to be related until that moment. Maybe I have brushed across it in previous encounters, but I was not ready to understand it at that moment. Of course, I went directly to Etymonline to verify my hypothesis, because a hypothesis is just a guess until you confirm your suspicions, right? The thing about scholarship is, when the light-bulb moment came, it felt like I had discovered it. The <-y>/<-ig>/<-ic>/<-ique> connection hadn’t occurred to me until that moment, and I felt once again that this is why I teach—to guide students to those moments of insight. This is the kind of experience I want for each of them. *International Phonetics Association
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8/4/2022 12:18:31 pm
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