Tag Archives: prefix
The German Prefix ‘Un’ Posted by Constanze on Apr 22, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re going to talk about German nouns that start with ‘Un’. Like in English, there are many adjectives in German that begin with ‘un’ to signify lack or negation. Some examples include the words unbequem (uncomfortable) and unverständlich (unintelligible). In both English and German, removing the prefix ‘un’ from these examples would…
The German Prefix ‘Ur’ Posted by Constanze on Apr 10, 2019
Guten Tag! Today we’re going to look at the German prefix ur. This is a very interesting prefix, because it is used only to talk about ‘original’, ‘primitive’, and ‘earliest’ things. Let’s get into it. The prefix ur is pronounced ooh-ah – exactly how you’d pronounce the German word for clock, die Uhr (but note…
Separable And Inseparable German Prefixes Posted by Constanze on May 10, 2017
I wrote a post recently about verbs that change their meanings when you add prefixes to them. These can be very confusing for language learners, as they think they recognise a verb when it actually means something totally different. The post led to a question about whether a particular prefix made the verb separable or…
Misleading German Verbs Posted by Constanze on Apr 12, 2017
Guten Tag! A while ago a blog reader called Michael sent this comment in: “an idea for a post… My knowledge of simple vocabulary sometimes lets me guess correctly at more complicated words. Halten/hold. Erhalten/receive. But sometimes knowing the basic word leads you down the wrong path. Erfahren is not about “to drive,” nor aufhören…
Separable Verbs II: Prepositions as prefixes Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 9, 2010
Separable verbs can be separated because they consist of two independent words, that is, they consist of the core verb and a particular prefix. The prefix is always either: a preposition, an adverb or an adjective. In the list below, you can find one example verb for every prepositional prefix. 1. ab- : 2. an-…
Separable Verbs I: Draw the line between prefixes and core verbs Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 1, 2010
With this post I would like to start a series on German separable verbs. In this introductory post I explain how you can distinguish separable verbs from inseparable verbs. The main difference between separable and inseparable verbs is that separable verbs consist of two words: a core verb and a semi-prefix, whereas inseparable verbs consist…