1241: History through Prefixes: 'ver-' / 'far-' / for-' May 3, 2018

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Looking at other, related languages' evolutions can offer great insight into their history; indeed, this is why so little is known about Basque, which has no known relatives. However, there is a lot to see with the history of Germanic languages. For instance the prefix 'ver-' in German 'vergessen' ('forget') or Dutch 'verliezen' ('lose'), the English 'for-' as in 'forgive' or indeed 'forget' and even the Yiddish 'ver-'/far-' depending upon how it is written in the Latin script, or '- ווער' when it is written in Assyrian letters, as in 'farklemt' (both emotionally 'depressed' and physically 'pressed') all come from the same origin. The root for all of these had the effect of adding intensive force, semantically speaking, in the same way that 're-' does in 'remember'. Nevertheless, in all four languages 'ver-'/'far-'/for-' gained a negative connotation, and will express renunciation such as in 'forgo', prohibition as in 'forbid', or simply undesirable things like with 'forlorn'. Only looking at this in English [4], it could be thought of as an English phonomenon, but looking across languages we see that this pattern is much older.
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