Talk:-a

-a


Compare -eau, where the English was deleted because it's not an English suffix, just some loanwords from French end in -eau. I find these two a little unclear anyway. For example, the example for the second one is stanza, that's a direct loan from Italian rather than, also I don't see how it implies femininity. If it means the original Italian noun is feminine, then yes, but that's not relevant to the English definition. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:16, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * In names it can imply femininity and is often used to create a feminine name from a masculine one. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 07:05, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we have this (or similar endings) as suffices in the Latin namespace? Furius (talk) 07:05, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Kept for lack of consensus to delete. bd2412 T 21:13, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we should be more specific about its use in creating female names like Kyla. Equinox ◑ 18:28, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Shortened version
Why's Etymology 8 reads Shortened version of preposition of, but the label of the definition says clitic form of o' ? --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:59, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Meaningless metrical suffix
Tea room/2020/May. - -sche (discuss) 22:27, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

RFM discussion: April 2017–May 2020
Merge senses “(Northern England) Same as -er in Standard English.” and “(Black English and slang) Used to replace -er in nouns.” Doesn’t this represent the same phenomenon? — Ungoliant (falai) 21:36, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I would just delete both: spelling final -er as -a isn't specific to any morpheme- the sound it represents is from a general feature of the phonology. For instance mother/mutha has had that last syllable all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, and I can't imagine what the -er/-a would be attached to even if it didn't. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:22, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Good point, I've reduced it to a mere see-also link to -er. ✅. - -sche (discuss) 16:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Translingual
Is this not Modern Latin? Rich Farmbrough, 17:41, 6 February 2023 (UTC).