Prefixes on nouns and adjectives

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Prefixes on nouns and adjectives: how a prefix changes the meaning

“Verbal prefixation” showed the prefix on a verb, where it sets direction and aspect. The same prefixes work on nouns and adjectives too, but they do a different job there: sreća “happiness, luck” → nesreća “misfortune; accident”, grad “city” → predgrađe “suburb”, narodni “national” → međunarodni “international”.

English does the same with un-, -less, sub-, inter-, co-, self-, and many Serbian words match Latin-based English ones piece by piece: međunarodni is inter-national, protivrečnost contra-diction. A dozen prefixes do nearly all the work: ne-, bez-, pra-, pre-, nad-, pod-, pred-, protiv-, među-, sa-, su-, samo-, sve-. Learn them and hundreds of words open up without a dictionary.

ne-: prefix number one

The most frequent of them is ne-, “un-, in-, non-”. English splits the job between un- and Latin in-/im-; Serbian uses one prefix for both. It is written together with the noun or adjective, unlike verb negation, which stands apart (ne radim “I don’t work”). It also stands apart when it turns down one word in favour of another, as ne svađa does in the second example below. Nouns first:

Adjective pairs are just as common: moguć → nemoguć, poznat → nepoznat, srećan → nesrećan, zavisan → nezavisan, zadovoljan → nezadovoljan, dovoljan → nedovoljan, strpljiv → nestrpljiv, verovatan → neverovatan: possible → impossible, known → unknown or unfamiliar, happy → unhappy, dependent → independent, satisfied → dissatisfied, sufficient → insufficient, patient → impatient, likely → incredible.

The prefix ne- comes in different strengths. Sometimes it is a plain “not”: nepoznat “unknown, unfamiliar”. Sometimes it is an opposite with a judgement: nesreća is not the absence of happiness but trouble, an accident; neprijatelj is not an “unfriend” but an enemy. And sometimes the word has a life of its own, and you simply learn its meaning: nevreme “storm”, nezgoda “mishap, minor accident”, nedelja “Sunday; week”.

Nesreća se dogodila zbog nevremena. The accident happened because of the storm.

To je bio običan nesporazum, ne svađa. It was just a misunderstanding, not a quarrel.

But ne- is not a master key. The commonest adjectives have an antonym with a root of its own: “bad” is loš, never a “nedobar”, and “small” is simply mali (see “Synonyms & antonyms”). English is the same: Orwell’s Newspeak ungood sounds wrong because bad exists. If a word has its own antonym, skip the prefix.

bez-: “without”, and how it sounds

The second main prefix is bez-, the preposition bez “without” (with the genitive) grown onto a word. It is Serbian -less, placed at the front. The difference from ne-: ne- denies a quality (“not so”), while bez- reports that something is missing (“lacking something”). Usually it builds an adjective, “bez + root + suffix”:

There are nouns too: bezbednost, bezakonje, besmislica, besposlica, beskućnik: “safety, security”, “lawlessness”, “nonsense”, “idleness”, “a homeless person”.

Sometimes ne- and bez- make two different words from one root. English tasteless has two senses, and Serbian splits them: bezukusan is “bland, with no flavour”, of food, while neukusan is “not tasty” and also “in poor taste”, of a joke or clothes.

Hrana u bolnici je bezukusna. The hospital food is bland.

To je bila neukusna šala. That was a tasteless joke.

Now the sound. Serbian spelling follows pronunciation, so the z of the prefix adjusts to the next consonant (see “Voicing assimilation”). Before a voiceless consonant, bez- becomes bes-, in writing too:

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Prefixes on nouns and adjectives

Changes only the meaning, not the part of speech or declension; one word (verb negation ne stands apart).

ne- “not”, bez- “without”

pra- deep time, pre- too much

nad-, pod-, pred-: place and rank

Relations: protiv-, među-, sa-/su-, samo-, sve-

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