Fac-Ups

"Are <fy> and <fic> twin base elements?" a client emailed me. I asked her, in return, what her own understanding of twin base elements was.

"I think they come from the same Latin or Greek root," she responded. "But I'm not sure."

She's been reading Shameless for a couple of years, and she's taken a few LEXinars, but none of my Latin classes. Despite my intimations that it's a waste of her time, she also religiously follows several of the big SWI Facebook groups, and I've pointed out several times where they've fed her the wrong information when she comes to me with questions. And she is not alone.

If you look at Louisa Moats's Speech to Print, on page 139, you will see a table listing what Moats calls "Common Latin roots, their meanings, and examples." She does not specify what she means by "meanings," but in real orthographic study, we differentiate between the historical, orthographic denotation of a word's morphological elements, and the present-day usage and connotations of a word in English. In her table, Moats lists fac, fact, fect, fic with the "meaning" of 'make or do' and the examples of ineffective, beneficiary, infection, and satisfactory.

Similarly, in Unlocking Literacy, Marcia Henry's appendix F also lists fac, fact, fect, fic (to make or do), with a full page of examples, listed in four columns. Henry's examples include three words that do not contain the letters fac, fact, fect, or fic at all: affair, profit, profiteer. She also includes many words with a replaceble <e> on the end not represented in her list: artifice, edifice, office, sacrifice, suffice. Henry's list omits face and surface, which are related, but it includes the words fiction, fictional, fictionalize, and fictitious, which are not at all part of this family. A the end of her list, Henry marks a separate, larger-font statement next to a graphic of a key: "The Latin suffixes -fy and -ify are related to the roots fac, fact, fect, and fic."

In one teacher's misguided SWI Facebook group, a participant asked for help figuring out a word sum for the word significant. "My thinking is sign + ify + ic + ant," she wrote, "But I'm stuck on why the <y> is dropped and not kept when adding the <ic> suffix. Any insight?"

The questioner is correct that the <y> in her word sum is a big problem; English never, ever, ever "drops" a <y>. A <y> can toggle with an <i>, but it is never dropped or replaced.

Unfortunately, she doesn't get much help from the "experts" or "all-star contributors" in the group.

"Yes," says the admin, "the <fy> family is big and has many spellings, <face>, <fic>, <fy> and others (short on time and spotty connection) – at any rate, there are two base elements connected with an <i> (connecting vowel letter)." The admin then offers several word sums, and notes at the bottom of her comment, "Revised fron <fice> to <fic> after Kellie pointed out words in which <fic> is final."

Then, there is some debate about <fice> vs. <fic>: Is it <sign + i + fic + ant> or <sign + i + fice + ant>?

The aforementioned Kellie gives terrify and terrific as examples for what she claims are "twin bases" <fy> and <fic>. But they're not twins. No one in the trhead explains what twin base elements are, and how we can tell.

The original poster is surprised that *<-ify> isn't a suffix, and the admin reiterates "[i]t is a base. It isn't always connected by the vowel but is most often." The admin doesn't give any explanation or reason why <fy> is a base element – once again, a big group admin makes a sweeping statement with zero evidence, and doesn't help anyone understand how to tell if morphological pieces are simple or complex, bases or affixes. No guidance; just edicts.

The admin then offers a mealy apology for not having time to investigate before she posted. So maybe take the time next time? I mean, it's not like someone is hemorrhaging without her immediate attention or anything. Mostly, now, the big groups are full of people promoting themselves, their classes, and their products, including people who excoriated me in the past for charging money for my classes. But even when there is word study, it's always, always, always full of admins' pronouncements with no support or explanation, and errors perpetuated by "experts" who have no idea what they are uncommitted to evidence and accuracy.

Other errors I saw but won't address here: not understanding the difference between transcription and transliteration, the word ocean is NOT AN ADJECTIVE (and shame on anyone charging you money to misteach you that!), plus meandering pontifications and guesswork from the computer guy who embarrassed himself in the comments here a couple of months ago.

So, in a sea of misinformation, how are we to make sense of all this fac, fec, fic, foc, and fuc-ing nonsense? I'll show you, as I've done many times before. Here's it's captured in writing, and as usual, this post alone is worth your $60 annual subscription: