Chapter 6 – Prefixes, Pre-verbs and Verbs

Like English, the Mi’kmaw language also contains prefixes. Prefixes are words added in front of another word to modify its meaning. Even the word prefix contains a prefix, ‘pre‘, which means ‘before‘. However, also in English, just because a word might start with what can be seen as a prefix, it does not mean that there is a prefix, you must look at the ‘base‘ word that is being modified.

For example

The prefix ‘un‘ means ‘not‘ in English. Words that start with this prefix would be:

• Unhappy
• Unruly
• Untrue

However, just because a word begins with un, it does not mean that word is being affected by the un prefix. For example:

• Uncle
• Under
• Unite

These words are not being affected by a prefix, but their spelling does contain it. This is true of the Mi’kmaq language as well. There are many prefixes in the language, but just because the word may begin with one, it does not mean that it is indeed a prefix. Let us looks at some examples