昔日文章

Knowing the relationship between Greek roots and word formation in English 認識希臘字根與英文造字的關係 T : Thomas ｜M : Mickey   T: Hi Mickey! What are you up to?   M: I’m enjoying my afternoon tea here. Can you spare some time?   T: Oh, sure.   M: Ah Thomas, by the way, did you read the newspapers today? It’s reported: Despite the number of influenza confirmed cases is coming down, there should be quite a few invisible virus-carriers, those asymptomatic carriers. What does this word, asymptomatic mean?   T: It’s one of those English hybrid words with the Greek prefix － a-, meaning not, non, un, to negate the basic meaning of the word, which in this case asymptomatic actually means no symptoms.   M: It’s something new to me. Can you give me some examples?   T: Sure. I can think of the following, to start with: asymmetrical; atypical and even abnormal, where the ab is a variation of a.   M: Wow! I haven’t come across something like these.   T: Haha! It’s time you should read more books.   T：嗨 Mickey！你要做甚麼？   M： 我正在吃下午茶。你有時間嗎？   T： 哦，當然有。   M： 啊Thomas，順便問一下，你今天讀報了沒有？據報道： 儘管流感的確診病例數子正在下降，但應該有不少隱形帶菌者，即那些無症狀帶菌者。Asymptomatic這個詞是甚麼意思？   T： 它是帶有希臘語前綴 —— a- 英語混合詞之一，意思是not、non、un，以否定原詞的基本含義，在這種情況下， asymptomatic實際上意味著沒有症狀。   M： 這詞對我來說很新鮮。能給我一些例子嗎？   T： 當然可以。首先，我可以想到以下幾點：不對稱（asymmetrical）；非典型的（atypical）；冷漠（apathy）；甚至異常（abnormal），其中ab是a的變體。   M： 哇！我從沒有接觸過這些詞。   T： 哈哈，你是時候要多看書了!