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Word modifiers are important to know because it can make it easy to communicate a concept without knowing the exact definition of a word or if it even exists in a dictionary. Communicating concepts is more important throughout the world when generating ideas than memorizing grammar rules and complex terminology on the syntactical structure of the English language and its appropriate usage.
While dictionaries and grammar rules are useful when generating dictionaries and documenting etimology, simplification is an ongoing pattern in human development and the study of language in human interactions; they are complex and intent is easier to describe when coming to an agreement on word usage, its meaning, its concepts, and the general understanding in a specific environment. Standardization bodies work to add consistency to words that are used differently in different regions. This is normally not as important as knowing the correct context of words for the local environment but can be useful when traveling or making friends in different geographies. Diferences in language can be questioned, and unknown usage can be requested to be explained when making new friends. This is part of humand development.
To negate means to convey the opposite.
These word modifiers don't always negate a word, but it might be understood to do so. Its important to find a word, then add the word modifier and see if it makes sense in a sentence as the opposite of what the word means.
Here, in, un, im are understood to mean not. Not convenient, not desirable, not possible. Some would argue that impossible means highly unlikely, but others would say that if something unlikely is achieveable, then it becomes possible, so impossible makes more sense as not possible rather than highly unlikely.
Most people do not pay attention to the way words are put together, they evolve over time, humans mimic the words their parents speak and that are heard in their environment and assign a meaning to them as they grow older. Examining word origin, meaning, sub meaning, combinotronics of vocabularical rules, and the decipherment of a new and unintelligible word phrase likely came about due to boredom and has little use in professional environments.
The dog ate a cat, conveys the same meaning as the cat was eaten by a dog. It makes absolutely no difference in a world were almost everybody speaks and learns English at a young age.
Normally, people expect brevity, and clarity. If a sentence needs to be longer to be more precise, that is ok. But if a concept, idea, observation, desire, request, or response can be communicated with less words, thats preferable.
Long explanatory sentences are used because an expert might need to break concepts down into small steps of comprehension. But over explaining concepts and why those observations are true, can result in describing the mathematical formula for how words are put together.
Clarity is also important. If someone says "The sailor went to the boat and it floated on the water" Most people wont understand that the sailor somehow fell off the boat and was floating next to the boat. Its not necessary to correct the sentence into "The boat that the sailor went into floated on the water". Both sentences have the same meaning to most people. These are things that surveyists do when two different cultures are learning a new language together.
This is normally not important. If a word has multiple meanings, people can guess what the word means by the context of the entire sentence.
Compare inferior and supperior. When, more or less means below average and the other approximately means above average. It can be slightly above average or greatly above average but it is superior to the inferior.
In a sense, the word ferior means about average, but people don't use that word. It doesn't require encyclopedic research to discover that context.
Has anyone ever said that the weather was about ferior today or that they discovered their grades in school were approximately ferior?
The word modifier in also means not ferior, it negated the ferior; but its not understandable that not ferior means less than ferior without the word superior to use as a reference, or the previous knowledge on the context of in, un, im.
A good exercise is to go through the dictionary for in, un, im and to either make a copy of the pages and put a checkmark next to the words that are negated by these word modifiers or to type two different documents, one with the words that are negated, and one with words that are not negated or mean something different.
hint
Industry, unintelligent, unclear, unaware, immediate, impatient, imminent, image, immense, imbalance, inept (aptitude), interrupt, interface, introduce, intermediate, intelligent, intellect, unworthy, umarried, unsettled, unneccesary.