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I raised a question on HiNative yesterday, and I’d like to share it.

Q: The prefixes of the word ‘compatriot’ and ‘contemporary’ both mean: with or together, hence when should we use ‘com’ and when should we use ‘con’? I mean, as a native English speaker, how do you differentiate ‘com’ and ‘con’? When you are writing an unfamiliar word, how do you know that you should write ‘compatriot’ but not ‘conpatriot’? Are there any rule exists in the collocation of the similar prefixes or it is just some kind of coincidences? 

As an English learner, I have been curious about this question for a long time. Same to the affix, ‘descendant’ and ‘student’ (ant/ent), ‘attainable’ and ‘exhaustible’(able/ible). 

Thanks for your reply!

A: In CON-, N usually becomes M before a bilabial plosive i.e. B or P. This just makes the pronunciation easier.-ANT -ENT comes from Latin (or French). Generally it means a person or thing linked to the verb. A student is someone who studies. A confidant is someone in whom you confide. The spelling unfortunately depends on the verb group in Latin, but you can generally guess from the letters that come before. E.g. CT+ANT, ER+ENTIt is a similar situation for -ABLE -IBLE, meaning able to be targeted by that verb.Most English speakers don’t know Latin, so we tend to learn these spellings by heart.