Endings
What does a small piece added to a word show or change?
Significado
Small pieces attached to a word can change its meaning or show how it fits into a sentence. They can make a new word or mark features such as number, time, person, and a participant's role. Languages differ in how many they use and where they attach, and some express these meanings without them. Unlike Prepositions and postpositions, these pieces belong to the word rather than standing separately beside it.
Como identificar
Compare related forms of a word and look for recurring attached pieces that add meaning or show its role in the sentence.
Na tua língua materna
Plural endings mark more than one on nouns and adjectives, and many words have separate masculine and feminine forms. Verb endings show time and help identify the subject, while other suffixes create related words or add meanings such as small size. Nouns do not take endings for roles such as recipient or location; Portuguese normally uses prepositions for those links.
Os meninos estão animados.
Both the noun and its description carry the plural ending -s.
Eu trabalhava perto de casa.
The ending -ava presents the work as a past ongoing situation or habit.
Você quer um cafezinho?
The suffix -zinho can suggest a small serving or make the offer sound friendly.
Na tua língua de aprendizagem
English uses endings such as -s for plural nouns and present-tense verbs with he, she, or it, -ed for many past-tense verbs, and -ing in forms built with be. It also adds pieces to make new words, as in kind and kindness. Most nouns do not change their ending to show their sentence role; word order and prepositions do that work.
My sister works in a shop.
-s marks the present-tense verb with a singular subject such as my sister.
We washed the cups.
-ed marks past time; -s shows that there is more than one cup.
Thank you for your kindness.
-ness makes a noun from the adjective kind.
Learners whose language uses little or no word-ending grammar may omit -s or -ed. Learners whose language marks noun roles with endings may expect an English noun ending where a preposition or word order is needed.