The Prefix “er-” Explained – Part Two

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
And today, it’s time for the second part of our look at the meaning of the prefix

er-

In the first part, we learned that the core of er- is the broad idea of reaching a goal and it can be about getting something as well as also about reaching a state. We also learned that er- has a bit of an “epic” grand vibe and that er-verbs tend to not bother with mundane day to day grind.

And finally, we found out that er- has actually shot ge- at the yearly Non-Separable Prefixes Christmas dinner. And it wasn’t an accident because to death is also one of the ideas it carries and lends to verbs.
Yeah… if you haven’t read part one, you’re probably hellah confused now :).
So if you want to read it, you can find it here:

• The Prefix “er-” Explained – Part  1

So what are we going to do today?
I mean… we know the general theme and we’ve seen how it expresses itself in various of the er-verbs.
But what we don’t know yet, though, is where the prefix actually comes from.
That’s what we’ll explore today.

And that’ll not only reveal some surprising connections and help us make sense of the er-verbs that didn’t really fit in so far (like erziehen or ergeben).  It’ll actually offer us a new perspective entirely, and we’ll see what er- REALLY is and how it’s kind of a metaphor for life itself.
So are you ready to jump in?
Then let’s go.

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The origin of the prefix “er-“

And we’ll start our journey with the Indo-European root *uidh-. The idea of this root is  “outward, upward” and I think many of you have already guessed that it’s the origin of English out as well as German aus.
But those are just the most obvious offspring.

The Germanic languages for a long time had plenty of variations and one that made it into modern German is the prefix ur-. It’s not what typically comes to mind, when we think of prefixes, but there’s actually a good lot of really nice words with it, that all revolve around outward in a sense of origin.
Like for instance der Urknall.
A Knall is a bang and der Urknall is the big bang. The one that started it all. Or how about der Urmensch, which is a generic term of prehistoric human. So the humans that “started it all”. Oh, and for those who are more into the Bible version of creation, there’s the word die Ursünde. Which translates to original sin. The sin that “started it all”.

Now, not all ur-words have such an epic scale or course.
The Uroma (which you have to read with a STOP after Ur-) is not the absolute first grandmother ever. It’s “just” a great-grandmother, one level closer to the “origin“.
And with the noun die Ursache there isn’t even age involved because it simply means cause; in the sense of “thing that caused something“.

• “Danke!”
  “Keine Ursache.”
• “Thanks.”
  “No need./Not for that.”
  (lit.: “No cause.” you’re telling the person there’s nothing that would cause a “thank you”)
  
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Thomas hat mit seinem Elektro-Roller fast einen Unfall verursacht.
• Thomas almost caused an accident with his electric scooter.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

The sense of originating is part of most of the ur-words though and I’ll add more of them to my epic dictionary, so you can keep digging.
But we’re actually here for er- today. And I am pretty sure most of you have at least a hunch as to why we spent so much time with ur-.
It’s because ur- and er- used to be the same thing.

Er- is basically the unstressed, washed out version of ur- . You see, in Germanic languages there tends to be a big differential between stressed syllables and unstressed syllables. So the stressed ones really stand out, while the not stressed ones get little attention and effort – particularly when they’re on the edges of a word. . So over time, they just kind of atrophy and either they disappear completely, like many English verb endings. Or they at least trend toward the laziest sounds we can make.
One of which is that weird “e” you get when you just open your mouth a little and make a sound. I know there’s an IPA symbol, but I don’t really care to search for it. If you know it, you know it and if you don’t it won’t help you at all. In English, a good example is the “e” in the. 

And in German it’s the e in all the non-separable prefixes… ver, ent, ge, zer, be. They all used to be “more colorful” back in the day, but für- is harder to pronounce than ver- (as you all know ;) ). And so time and lazy Germanic speakers have stonewashed them because non-separable prefixes are all NOT stressed.
The ur- in the nouns I mentioned, however, ur- just happened to carry the main emphasis itself, so its colorful vowel was preserved.

And there’s actually the perfect showcase for this: the noun der Urlaub and the verb erlauben.
Erlauben is the German word for allow, der Urlaub means vacation. Seems like a bit of a stretch, but originally, Urlaub was simply the noun for the verb and had the general sense of permission. Today, that word is die Erlaubnis and Urlaub has shifted toward a specific permission… the permission to not come to work. Makes a whole lot of sense, once you know it.
And for these words, you can really hear the difference between the unstressed er- and the stressed ur-

• UR-laub
• er-LAU-ben
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And when I try to say “urlauben” for the verb that’s actually kind of hard. I mean… not hard, but I can feel the effort :).

Anyway, er- and ur- are the same, so that means that the ultimate core idea of er- is a notion of outward , upward  with a vibe of emerging, creating, bringing out into the world.

The Real Core of the Prefix “er-“