>>
>>And I haven't even started on the shortage of suffices in English. The same suffix, -s, denotes third person of present tense in verbs, plural in nouns, and serves as possesive suffix (with an apostrophe, though - but sounds exactly the same).
>
>I suppose you realize that the plural of suffix is not suffices.

I figure the jury's (sic!) still out on this one. In British English, which is mostly taught in Europe, we learn that Latin nouns keep their Latin plurals, hence cactus-cacti, index-indices, matrix-matrices. I've heard more and more exceptions to this lately (which accidentally coincides with my stay in the Sta(y)tes).

> And "its", without apostrophe, is the possessive form - a real killer. The "exception that proves the rule", as we like to say. Figure that one out!

I knew I had missed one more killing example in my list of overloaded suffix/ces.

As an example to the opposite, I'll try to list a few sufficxes ( :) ) from my language, and I'm pretty sure a similar set exists in most Slavic languages, which are used to create a noun from a verb or another noun:

-ište - place where; klizalište (klizati se - to skate) - skate rink
-ona, -onica - room where it is done: učionica (učiti - to learn) - classroom
-ik, -nik - one who is subject to, or of an operation; mučenik (mučiti - to torture) - martyr; radnik (raditi - to work) - worker
-lac - same, but never passive - ranoranilac (rano - early, raniti - get up early) earlyriser
-telj - another strictly active - učitelj (učiti- to learn) - teacher
-ač, -aš - another strictly active, person or tool - skijaš (skijati se - to ski) - skier; grejač (grejati - to heat [something]) - heater
-lo, -alo, -ilo - tool suffix - merilo (meriti - to measure) - criterion, measurement tool
-lica - same but gives a feminine noun - grejalica - space heater

Add there a few more to create diminutives, few more for augmentatives, and a dozen more I can't remember... and you'll see why there's very rarely any confusion between a mower (machine - that's "kosilica") and a mower (person - that's "kosac"), a best seller (book) and a best seller (successful tradesperson), etc etc.

Um... back to English. It's so much easier to make fun with :).