Upsarg and Pratyay (उपसर्ग–प्रत्यय) — Word Formation, the Two Suffix Families and the 'Pratyek' Trap

Hindi grammar hides a whole block of marks behind one idea — shabd rachna, word formation. A word is rarely alone. Take a root, put something in front of it and you get a new word; put something at the end and you get another one. The piece in front is an upsarg, a prefix. The piece at the end is a pratyay, a suffix. Between them they generate most of the vocabulary a paper can test, which is why every language paper reaches for them — BPSC TRE-4 Part I Hindi, the CTET Hindi language paper, the Hindi section of SSC.

The encouraging part is that this is a finite list, not an ocean. Sanskrit contributes twenty-two prefixes, Hindi about a dozen of its own, and Persian and Arabic another set that arrived through everyday speech. Learn the lists once and you stop guessing. The hard part is that papers never ask you to define a prefix. They hand you a whole word and ask you to split it, and the splitting is where the mark is won or lost.

1. In the word प्रत्येक (pratyek), 'प्रति' is —

2. Which pratyay turns बूढ़ा into बुढ़ापा?

3. Which of these words is formed with a कृत् प्रत्यय (krit suffix)?

4. The upsarg 'बे' in बेईमान comes from which language?

5. How many upsarg has Hindi taken from Sanskrit?

6. How many upsarg does the word अनुपस्थित contain?

7. In दूधवाला, the element 'वाला' is —

8. Which of these words carries both an upsarg and a pratyay?