Tag Info

Truthiness isn't a minimization of the word truth, though — what Colbert did when he invented that phrase was incorrectly turn the word truth into the adjective truthy by adding -y to it (correct adjective would be "true", of course), and then turn it back into a noun by adding -ness. If you wanted to do a similar thing to the word Wahrheit, you'd end up ...

In my experience, for Hochdeutsch, "-lein" nowadays is often the exception that you would fall back to in case the more common "-chen" doesn't work, cf. "Bächlein" (because "Bächchen" would be impossible to pronounce even for native speakers). An a/o/u vowel often changes to their corresponding umlaut: Bach -> Bächlein Brot -> Brötchen Punkt ...

It should be pointed out, that "truthiness" is a coined word (by Stephen Colbert in this case, with the intention to make a joke). So basically, you could equally make up a German word: Wahrheitchen, Wahrheitlein, Wahrheitle (schwäbisch), Wahrheiterl (bayrisch), Wirklichkeitchen, Wirklichkeitigkeit (intentionally violating usual ...