We're going to go a learn-in today.

A listener named Lon Coney asked what's going on with the A bit at the start of words

like a sleep and a wake.

When does this A even team up with words?

Why do we have a wake, but we don't have a walk?

Plus the meaning of a wake is pretty close to wake, but a wash does not mean full of washing.

For this answer, sometimes the most simple of disguises leads to the most complicated

of backstories.

We start with a single letter, the first letter of the alphabet, and end up with at least

ten different histories.

Grammar Girl here.

I'm Minyeon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.

Stick around because after we talk about the A prefix, we're going to talk about the

difference between personal and the fancier personnel.

The modern A prefix comes from a wide range of sources.

This pile-up of prefixes standing behind a single letter comes from two qualities

of language.

On the one hand, bits of words that are unstressed get eroded over time by the currents

of sound, like the word Lady getting worn down from Halafdia to its modern form.

The old English compound Halafdia had the word Loth, Halaf, and Nieder, Dia, with the

idea of being that the one who needed the dough for bread was the woman of the house.

As an aside, we got the word Lord the same way.

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