The conversation between human and AI assistant.
Why do we have unused prefixes in some words, like Pneumatic?
That's fascinating. Do other languages have a lot of unused prefixes or is it mostly an English thing?
Unused prefixes are found in many languages, not just English. It is often a result of words being borrowed or adapted from other languages throughout history. For example, French has many words with unused prefixes such as "psychologie" and "gnose," which also have silent "p" and "g" respectively.