German lessons for Owlet: 4a ("Betonung auf Beton")

The reason I began these lessons was that caitalainn wants to read German poetry. Few things could be more important for that than giving her an idea where to put the stress. German, like English, is a language with strong word stress. It's also distinctive, although there are far far fewer minimal pairs. (The one I remember best is one of my professor's favourite examples, Bombenpaket. With primary stress on the final syllable, this means "an awesome package", but put it on the first syllable and it means "a package with a bomb in it".)

The basic rule for native words is that the primary word stress falls on the initial syllable of the root. Why do I say "the root"? Because there are a number of derivational prefixes, which can come before it, some of which are still productive and some of which aren't. They are often divided into two categories, separable and inseparable, but these are somewhat misleading since most "separable" prefixes are inseparable in at least some words.

Let's start with the always-inseparables, since they're the smaller class; they never carry the word stress. You can find a complete list here of the verbal ones. Note that, since many German nouns and adjectives are derived from verbs, they may also carry these prefixes. Die Betonung "emphasis; stress", for instance, is derived from the verb betonen (itself a derivative of the noun der Ton "sound; note").

An interesting case is ge-/Ge-, which is really two separate prefixes that happen to look similar. For verbs, it a mark of the past participle or, more rarely, an archaic derivation prefix (e.g. gewöhnen "get used to", related in some murky way to wohnen "dwell"). Applied to nouns, it has collective force. For instance, der Busch is a bush, but das Gebüsch is shrubbery; eine Sprache is a language, but ein Gespräch is a chat. [Note both the umlaut and the neuter gender; these are regular features of derivatives with Ge-.]

From these examples, you might be forgiven for leaping the conclusion that the syllable ge-/Ge- is always unstressed. More than 90% of the time, you'll be right, but when you're wrong, you'll spectacularly so. Nuphy still remembers the student of his who talked about his Umgebung. (The source is umgeben "encompass; surround", a compound of um "about; around" and geben "give". Thus, -geb- represents the root and carries the stress.) To be absolutely certain of the stress assignment, you have to know a little of the word's history. For instance, ent- is another unstressed, inseparable prefix--but not in the verb entern "board [a ship]"! Entern and enterben "disinherit" (from das Erbe "inheritance") differ not only in stress but also in syllabification. The first is en-tern; the second is ent-erb-en (there's a little throat catch, a so-called "glottal stop"--between the first and second syllables).

Is that enough for now? Then let's have a quiz! Can you tell me the proper stress placement for the following words?

1. entlassen
2. betend
3. Erkerdach
4. Empfang
5. verkehren
6. Volltreffer
7. gemütlich
8. verboten