With this obviated, what is the ‘pre’ in ‘prefix’ itself? Pre (‘before’) relates to the proto-term pere (before); now pele in Setswana due to the common l to r sound-shift. As for su in ‘suffix’, it means ‘under’, as in ‘sous-chef’ (pronounced ‘soo-shef’ in French): the chef working under the chef: his deputy. Su might seem unrelated to ‘under’ in Setswana (which is ‘tlase’), but its direct equivalent is ‘selo-se’…the se itself being a prefix meaning ‘like’, as in se-morafe (‘tribe-like’ as in ‘tribal’ or ‘tribalistic’) and ‘selo’ meaning ‘thing’ – thus a thing ‘like’, or ‘after the fashion of’. Indeed, ‘like’ and ‘after’ relate in that a thing that is likened to something else is deemed to be ‘following’, or is ‘behind’ or ‘after’ or ‘under’ that thing. Of course, selo in rapid speech is s’oo.
As it turns out, selo-se is but one of many compound terms of s’oo, others being sus, sub, sup, sug, suc, suf and sum – all implying ‘under’. In other words, the great variation following su (‘under’) is quite evidently a pale echo of the complex variations of definite and indefinite articles in Setswana: s’oo-se[tona], ‘s’oo-bo[rethe], s’oo-go[swa], s’oo-mo[diro], etc. Having duly dealt with the make-up of the terms ‘prefix’ and ‘suffix‘ themselves, let us now deal with examples of such appendages. One of most used of prefixes is ‘a’ – a proto-term that can mean ‘of/towards’ or ‘away from’ depending on the context. Example: ‘metsi a noka’: water belonging to the river’ is as in the English term ‘abase’ (‘lead toward being at the base’). Examples of the opposite meaning is ‘attenuate’ (‘lead away from being tenuous, i.e. to weaken’), and ‘asexual’ (away from (i.e. ‘not’) sexual’.
