VIII Word structure and word formation
52 Principles of word formation
52.1 This section describes the main ways in which complex words are formed by
combining vocabulary elements. For example: Umweltfreundlichkeit ‘environmental
friendliness’ is composed of Umwelt ‘environment’ + Freundlichkeit ‘friendliness’.
Each of these in turn is built up as follows:
um ‘around’ + Welt ‘world’ > Umwelt ‘environment’
Freund ‘friend’ + -lich > freundlich ‘friendly’ + -keit’ > Freundlichkeit
‘friendliness’The patterns of word formation are listed in this section simply according to whether
they involve elements added to the beginning of a word (prefixes), to the end of a
word (suffixes) or some other process.52.2 It is important to realize that you cannot generalize from most of these patterns to
predict other words. This is as true of English as it is of German. Note the following
three pairs of words:
tief > Tiefe; schön > Schönheit; schnell > Schnelligkeit
deep > depth; beautiful > beauty; fast > speedLearning English involves knowing that the noun formed from the adjective ‘steep’ is
not ‘stepth’. Similarly, learning German involves knowing that the word for ‘speed’
is not Schnelle.52.3 The irregularity of these patterns makes them largely unpredictable for someone in the
early stages of learning the language. It is advisable not to coin words you have not met
before on the basis of one of these patterns. But a knowledge of them will prove very
useful in recognizing the meaning of words encountered for the first time and is
therefore important in building vocabulary.
52.4 Some word formations have acquired specialized meanings. Thus, die Höhle (derived
from hohl ‘hollow’) ought to mean ‘hollowness’ but actually means ‘cave’, and
hitzefrei might mean ‘free from heat’ but actually means ‘on official holiday from
school because of extremely hot weather’.