Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[sunmaggie]

Dear teachers:
Un, in and im m ean the negative or opposite of things such as unable. Once I said that I felt uncomfortable to friends, and they told me that I should use "imcomfortable."
My question is that is there any rules for using these three to indicate the opposite meanings?
Thanks.

[ebb]

Your friends are unfortunately incorrect and their unfounded reply was most infelictous and impractical. One is "uncomforable" -- there is no such word as "imcomforable" in English, and in English such a construction would be improvident, and even impossible (not "unpossible").

There are other prefixes as well. "ir" = respective, irrespective; reversible, irreversible; religious, irrelgious.

But there is no "imcomfortble." The very thought of such an untoward usage makes me anti-comfortable.
_________________
"This is insolence up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill, upon reading a newspaper�s criticism of his having ended a sentence with a preposition.

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun, than with just a kind word." Al Capone.

[LucentShade]

Unfortunately, there is no good way to predict which one of the negative prefixes un/in/im/ir will be used in every situation; however, there is one thing about in/im that makes things easier. "Im" will appear before words that begin with b,p, or m, like impractical or immortal. The prefix was originally in-, but for phonetic reasons, the n can sound like m before these three letters, so over time, the spelling was changed to im~. So, for words like comfortable, it can't be im~, because comfortable does not start with one of those letters.