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German Intonation


Definition: Germanic words are usually stressed on the first syllable of their stem, i.e. prefixes and suffixes are not stressed.

Examples in German:

Schule
Geschäft
bekommen
während
Verteidigung
magerer
Eitelkeit
brauchbar

Some prefixes are always stressed: ab, an, auf, aus, bei, ein, empor, fort, los, mit, nach, nieder, un, ur, weg, weiter, wieder.

The following prefixes are stressed if they are the only ones, but not if combined with another prefix: da, dar, her, hin, vor, zu.

Examples in German:

hingehen
hineingehen
herkommen
herüberkommen
vorgehen
vorausgehen

The suffixes ei and ieren are always stressed, miss and wider only in nouns.

Examples in German:

Bäckerei
kopieren
widerstehen
Widerstand


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German Grammar